


In The Rain

by joongz



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: (like canon typical for zombie related stuff), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Violence, Character Development, Happy Ending, M/M, Mentions of Suicide & Depression, POV Multiple, Slow Burn, Temporary Character Death, in the flesh - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2020-12-21 04:37:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21068963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joongz/pseuds/joongz
Summary: “My name is Park Seonghwa,” the young man introduced himself. “I work for the PDS Sufferers Housing System,” he explained. Wooyoung swallowed thickly, then he let out a stuttering breath. “I am calling on behalf of Kang Yeosang. He’s going to be joining us tomorrow, it is part of his Integration Back into Society program to meet the people closest to him from before his death. You were one of his closer friends, am I correct?”Wooyoung tried to find his voice.Yeosang is alive,he kept thinking on loop.“That’s correct,” he answered, barely keeping his tears at bay.(Or, a very angsty story about forgiving, growing and healing, and falling in love with unexpected people. In The Flesh AU!)





	1. Flesh and Bone

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first ATEEZ fic!  
I really wanted to write another _In the flesh_ inspired fic because I love that show, and it's fall and I'm sad, so it just fits perfectly lmao
> 
> About the fic, it's rated M due to the whole zombie thing as it can be quite gruesome! And as a warning as certain characters will die (not permanently), but just so you know! Also, you don't need to have seen the TV show to understand the fic, although, if you do like the idea of gay zombies, fighting oppression, and crying a lot then I recommend it!
> 
> Aside from that uhhh, I hope you enjoy this! :') 
> 
> (PS: if you're a monbebe here's a _in the flesh!mx_ fic I wrote about a year ago: [candle;](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16450811) hehe)
> 
> PSS: All chapter names are songs by Keaton Henson, whom I recommend to listen to while reading this, and just generally!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before Wooyoung could even consider whether he wanted to be alone right now or not, a familiar voice called out his name. It was Yeosang, from his class.

Oddly, when chaos was unfolding, the world was quiet.

Jeong Wooyoung was walking home from high school, his backpack loosely over his shoulders, a soda can in his hand that he sipped from occasionally. The sky above him was gray and the trees that lined the family friendly neighborhood were slowly turning orange, some leaves had already fallen. It was a typical late September day, nothing unusual about it. 

Or so Wooyoung believed.

Of course he wondered why the streets were so empty, why he felt as though he was the only soul walking through the neighborhood. Just half an hour ago he had exited school after a particular annoying and long detention, together with a kid from his class, Kang Yeosang. The two of them had sat quietly, each at a corner of the classroom, their teacher on her laptop going through files. When 5pm had rolled around the two teenage boys had bolted out of their seats to leave, their teacher telling them she wanted their reports about _ why they had done wrong and why it was wrong _ on the table by the morning. Yeosang had given her a quick nod and _ yes, ma’am _ thrown over his shoulder. Wooyoung hadn’t even bothered.

Whereas Yeosang had grabbed his bike from the then mostly empty bike rack, giving Wooyoung a nod as goodbye, Wooyoung had retrieved the soda can form his backpack and began the long walk home. 

(Well, not that long, only about half an hour, but after school he was tired and his energy levels were low, so it took him longer.)

The first sign that something was off and terribly wrong were the birds Wooyoung saw lift off of a tree in the distance. The birds, loudly cawing, all seemed to be frightened by something, but Wooyoung dismissed it as a cat—or perhaps a dog—running about and chasing them.

Then, just as he was passing his neighbor’s house, he saw a figure appear in the horizon. A man it seemed, who limped and groaned. Wooyoung considered walking to the man and ask him if he was okay, but he decided against it. Wooyoung could be quite lazy sometimes, and he honestly thought the dude would be okay, so he dipped quickly and walked up to the front door of his home.

It was strange that the door was unlocked as his parents usually still worked at this hour, coming home around six or seven in the afternoon. Wooyoung shrugged it off.

Wooyoung wasn’t one to be particularly surprised or shaken, and if he was he could hide it well. Even at his young age he had already managed a perfect poker face, only giving away a slight twitch of his lips or the nearly imperceptible rise of his left eyebrow. He learnt that hiding your true emotions was power, power over others when they wanted to hurt you. So Wooyoung walked around with a mask most of the time.

But when he entered the house, saw his dad’s messenger bag lying by the entrance, both of his polished leather shoes still standing on the shoe rack and glistering in the sunlight that fell on them from the window next to the door, Wooyoung felt unsettled. He bit his bottom lip worriedly.

“Dad?” he called out into the house, a somber atmosphere reigning over the immobile furniture and unbearable quietness. 

He didn’t get a response, which made him even more nervous.

“Dad, are you home?” Wooyoung called out again, gulping as a knot formed in his throat.

He did a quick scan of the living room and kitchen, both empty. So he decided to head upstairs, still wearing his jacket and school bag, he had completely forgotten about anything else than just the mystery at hand. Even in his small left hand he held the now empty soda can, clutching it tightly and making the aluminium bend underneath his strength. It was unconscious, by now, the way he was squeezing the can, but helpful. 

The scene was so uncannily and frightening familiar.

Wooyoung tried not to think about the damn similarities, but the way this built up: the empty house, the bag by the door, the quietness, the fear nagging at him. The first time it had been out of the blue, so unexpected, and Wooyoung had learnt then, for the first time, how cruel life could be. He didn’t want this to be the same, he hoped it wasn’t. 

Wooyoung didn’t believe in God, but as he reached the end of the staircase and saw the bathroom door ajar, the light inside turned on, he prayed. He sent a silent but urgent prayer out to whatever God was willing to listen, it was more like a desperate scream at this point. 

His body was shaking and the can was in an unrecognizable shape by now, but Wooyoung couldn’t stop and he couldn’t bring himself to turn around or halt in his steps. He kept on walking, with weak knees and a rattled heart, until he reached the bathroom door, and with a shaky hand he pushed it open.

The sigh of relief escaped his mouth before he had even registered that the bathroom was empty.

“Shit,” he mumbled, his voice so thin and weak. “Phew.”

A clatter came from downstairs and it startled him bad, his heartbeat going wild. He dropped the can, the noise of it hitting the bathroom tiles alarmed whoever was downstairs and stumping footsteps could be heard approaching the staircase, then the ever growing louder sound of someone running upstairs came. Wooyoung was too surprised to do anything so he just stood still.

A tall man appeared, he was wearing a military uniform, and he had a gun that he held with both hands—which he was pointing at Wooyoung. He stopped dead in his tracks as he saw Wooyoung, who was now half hiding behind the door frame of the bathroom.

There was a heavy silence, then the man lowered his gun and grabbed a walkie-talkie from his bag. He held down the button on the side, cackling static came from the device.

“False alarm. It’s just a teenager,” the soldier spoke into it. “Over.”

More static. 

“Are you sure? Some of these fuckers look human at first, over,” came a distorted voice from the device.

“I am sure. He looks scared, over.”

“You know what to do, over.”

The soldier put the walkie-talkie back into his small bag and adjusted the gun to his back. He reached out his hand then, palm towards Wooyoung, and crouched a bit, then he took a step forward.

“Hey, kid,” he said, his voice quieter in an attempt to appear soft and friendly. “I need you to come with me. There’s an invasion happening and this neighborhood is in danger.”

Wooyoung tried to make sense to the words he was hearing, but it just couldn’t be. That couldn’t be the truth. Was he dreaming?

“Where…” he started, deciding to trust the soldier for now. “Where are my parents?”

The soldier looked at him, scanning Wooyoung as if he was trying to decipher whether Wooyoung would be able to bear the truth or not.

“I’ll be honest, kid, you’re one of the few living people I’ve found around here…”

Wooyoung swallowed, but concealed how he truly felt. Whatever was going on, his parents would be okay, they _had_ to. Maybe it was nothing too serious and the military was just acting overly dramatic. Wooyoung approached the soldier and nodded his head, signalizing that he was willing to tag along with the man.

The soldier told him to wait and went to check all the rooms. He seemed to halt abruptly as he looked inside the room of Wooyoung’s parents, but only for a split second, then he walked towards Wooyoung. He placed his hand on Wooyoung’s shoulder to guide him downstairs, but his lips were pressed together and the way he squeezed Wooyoung’s shoulder spoke volumes.

Wooyoung knew what that shoulder squeeze meant; _ comfort, pity_… His dad had given him that same squeeze about a year ago during the funeral.

He clenched his hands tightly as he followed the soldier out of his house, his head empty as he kept all his emotions at bay. But there was no time for Wooyoung to even think about _not_ _thinking_ as a man—he supposed it was the man he had seen earlier, limping by the end of the road—ran at full speed towards them. Charging at them.

The soldier reacted quickly, jumping in front of Wooyoung, and pointed his gun at the running man and shot several times. Wooyoung let out a gasp, covering his face to avoid getting any blood spattered on him. Once the threat was eliminated, he decided to peak from behind the soldier at the now dead body.

The man lay on the floor, but what was odd was that he wasn’t really bleeding. There was a black and oozing liquid where the bullets had hit him in his head and chest, and now that Wooyoung had a chance to openly stare at the man he realized his skin was sickly pale, like a corpse, and his eyes weren’t human. They were white and the pupil looked all wrong. It was uncanny. 

Wooyoung swallowed and looked away because the more he looked the less human the man seemed, and more like a monster. But that couldn’t be, right? That couldn’t be.

“We really ought to get out of this zone, kid,” the soldier said, grimly looking around at the houses and the long, long road. “Let’s go, the checkpoint isn’t far.”

Wooyoung nodded and stuck close to the soldier, the need to reach out and grab the man’s hand was strong, but he refrained from doing so. It would probably just bother the soldier and Wooyoung didn’t want to seem scared or weak.

The walk was silent, the deafening quietness that Wooyoung had noticed earlier seemed even stronger now, and every little noise, from a leaf blowing over the ground to an airplane flying in the distance set all alarm bells off in his head. He’d spin around, on edge, staring at the friendly neighborhood—now not so friendly anymore. But it seemed as if the zone was empty since they didn’t find any other living sou—human or not human—and they reached a grocery store that was heavily guarded by soldiers. It was somewhere near the a more populated area in the neighborhood, a few blocks from Wooyoung’s high school. 

It baffled him how he had not noticed anything out of place earlier, it seemed so obvious now. Especially as it was louder there, car sirens sounding in the distance and guns going off from time to time. It reminded him of one of those scary movies, when humanity was on the brink of disappearing. Wooyoung wondered then if he was the only survivor, there surely had to be more.

The soldier greeted his companions and then told Wooyoung to go inside the grocery store and follow the instructions he would be given, and so Wooyoung did.

As he walked through the door, he let out a sigh of relief because there were certainly more survivors inside the store. A woman greeted him warmly, and asked him for his name, birthday, address, parents’ names, and some other personal information. Then he was rushed over to some doctors, who did a few tests on him and checked him for wounds. They gave him new clothes too. Blue washed out jeans and a gray sweatshirt which he promptly changed into. It all passed in a rush, he barely registered what was going on, the shock of the situation numbing him, but after it was done he was lead over to the rest of the survivors with a bag that contained some food and water; eating was the last thing on Wooyoung's mind in that moment. He stared at the survivors with huge eyes, not sure where to sit, where he’d feel comfortable. Some people sat alone, crying silently, or just staring blankly ahead. Others were in small groups, huddled together and comforting one another.

Before Wooyoung could even consider whether he wanted to be alone right now or not, a familiar voice called out his name.

“Wooyoung!” It was Yeosang, from his class. “Over here!” He waved his hand at Wooyoung. He was sitting alone, leaning against a wall, to his left was a cupboard filled with tomato soup.

Wooyoung decided to walk over to him, it’d be awkward not to, and he didn’t really have anywhere else to go. Maybe it would be comforting to be with someone he knew, and as it seemed, in between all the people in there, Yeosang was the only one that knew him. As Wooyoung made his way over to his classmate he scanned the crowd and didn’t find his parents or his older brother in between the faces. His heart dropped at that. 

_ No, no, _ he thought. He still had to have hope.

“Hey,” Yeosang greeted him once Wooyoung was close, he patted the stop next to him, a tired and faint smile on his face. “How are you holding up?” he asked once Wooyoung was sitting.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled, shrugging helplessly.

There was a short silence, Yeosang staring at Wooyoung’s profile, then a subtle cough. “Uh, I’m a bit embarrassed to ask this, but could we hold hands?” Yeosang asked, voice quiet and deep. Wooyoung looked at him, trying to see if he meant it. “I just… I need some comfort right now.”

“Okay.” Wooyoung offered his hand and Yeosang took it, clutching it tightly in his own clammy hand.

“Thank you,” Yeosang whispered weakly.

Wooyoung didn’t say anything back, unsure what he was even supposed to say. His mind and soul felt tumultuous, too many thoughts running around, and fear clawed at his throat. But mostly his brain kept replaying the way that man had appeared, then gotten shot, and finally his dead body lying on the concrete. His obviously _not human body_. Wooyoung couldn’t get that out of his head.

The morning after the chaos, Wooyoung didn’t know where he was, he knew he wasn’t in his bed, but the memories took a moment to fully crash back into his mind. Mostly it was Yeosang’s sleeping form right next to him, his hand still clutching Wooyoung’s, that made him remember in scattered bits the events of the previous day. 

The store was quiet, mostly everyone was asleep, and the few soldiers that stood guard looked like statues—unmoving and silent. It must have been around 6 in the morning, going by the dark blue sky outside and the low fog that spread on the road. Wooyoung couldn’t make out much from the limited view he had, but he saw several green cars parked—military cars—and more soldiers camping right outside the store. The quietness that reigned was eerie and just waiting to be cut. 

Wooyoung wanted to get up and check out the window, see if he could make out something. Or perhaps he could ask one of the guards about the happenings of the previous day, but once he looked at the boy next to him, the peaceful way in which he seemed to sleep, it proved to be hard disrupting Yeosang’s sleep.

They weren’t friends, merely classmates, but right now Yeosang was the only person Wooyoung knew, and he knew he couldn’t let that go. Like a light in the darkness, or that one saving grace when everything seemed to fall apart. Of course Wooyoung had hopes that his parents and brother would be all right, yet in the current reality of things they weren’t in the store and Wooyoung knew all proof pointed at the fact that they were most likely dead.

He swallowed, pushing that thought away. 

Yeosang’s hand twitched, then his grip tightened before he let go.

“Wooyoung?” he mumbled, sleep still pulling at his voice. He looked confusedly at Wooyoung, then he looked around himself as the realization slowly hit him, and he got up startled. “So that wasn’t a nightmare…”

“No.” Wooyoung got up as well. He stretched his arms above his head, bent his knees, and rotated his hips to loosen up his joints. “It wasn’t.”

Yeosang sighed, his bottom lip trembled and he bit it. He let out a shaky sigh. “I… I’m gonna go to use the bathroom. Wash my face. Yeah,” he stumbled over his words awkwardly, clearly about to cry. Wooyoung just nodded his head, deciding to walk up to one of the guards and give Yeosang space.

He shivered as he walked through the store, the temperatures had dropped overnight and Wooyoung was still partially under shock, tiredness settled deep in his bones. Things like these always made the world colder. Some of the people scattered around the store weren’t asleep, the just sat unblinking.

“Excuse me,” Wooyoung addressed a guard quietly, scared to disturb the silence. It was as if it was sacred in a way, kept everyone from acknowledging what was really happening.

“Yes?” The guard turned his head to look down at Wooyoung. He was young, probably in his early twenties, but his stare was hard and cold, a bit empty. The kind of stare someone wore after seeing terrible, terrible things that made him lose hope.

“What’s going on?” Wooyoung asked.

The guard didn’t answer at first, just stared blankly at Wooyoung. Then he looked up to stare at one of the other guards, when he looked back down at Wooyoung he just gave him a tight lipped smile.

“I’m sorry, I can’t answer that. A captain will come here soon and give an official statement about the situation we’re facing,” he answered and turned again to stare outside. 

Wooyoung joined him, just staring at the empty streets outside, the fog slowly dissipating and a drizzling rain falling instead. Towards the end of the street there were soldiers running, seemingly towards someone—or _ something _. The sound of their guns going off sounded muffled in the store, but Wooyoung stared on in astonished horror how they took down a person. 

_ Or a monster _, he rectified, as he thought back to the corpse with the black liquid oozing out of its body. He shuddered, finally turning away from the window.

He strolled around through the different aisles in the store, searching for the snack aisle so he could get himself something to eat. Surely the store’s clerk wouldn’t mind, this was one of those emergency types of situations. Once he stood in front of a dozen brands of cookies, grabbing his favorite ones, he thought about Yeosang and decided to get an extra one. He didn’t know what snacks the other boy liked, but this would have to do. He hoped.

Yeosang wasn’t in the spot they had slept at, so Wooyoung wandered into the badly lit bathroom to search for him. He found Yeosang on the floor, sniffling quietly, as he hugged his knees tightly, his head hidden. Wooyoung approached him hesitantly.

“Uh, hey,” he said, disrupting the quietness in the bathroom. Yeosang immediately stopped sniffling and looked up. His eyes were red rimmed, his cheeks wet. He wore a haunted look. “I-I brought you a snack?” Wooyoung kneeled down and offered the pack of cookies to Yeosang, who just looked at them. Wooyoung felt a bit stupid then, thinking that some cookies were gonna fix whatever grief or tumult the other boy was going through.

Nonetheless, after Yeosang passed the sleeve of his hoodie over his eyes in a brusque manner, he did take the cookies, and mumbled out a weak, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Wooyoung promised, then he sat down next to him. 

Here was the thing, Wooyoung was terrible at comforting people, San always had been the one to hug those in pain, to hug Wooyoung when he was going through a rough time, but San wasn’t there anymore. And Wooyoung had pushed whatever emotional turbulences that fact had brought up in him far away, converting his sadness into anger instead. He lashed out at school, he graffitied benches around the neighborhood… He wasn’t good at handling negative emotions.

“So… Uh…” He tried anyway; for San’s sake, he thought. San would’ve tried to comfort Yeosang in this situation, he would’ve comforted Wooyoung. “What do you think is happening?” he asked, not sure if this was a good topic to bring up or not. He believed if he just got the boy to talk, distract him from his tears… 

Yeosang shrugged. He ripped the cookie package open and picked one out, delicately. He ate it in one go, dusting off the crumbs that had fallen onto his hoodie.

“What do _ you _ think?”

“Oh, uh,” Wooyoung stuttered, thinking back to the corpse. “Maybe a virus? Like, like bovine influenza? Those outbreaks that happen once in a while, world wide, and you don’t eat meat for a while and then it’s fine…?” he rambled, trying to remember the exact symptoms.

He knew this was probably something different, never had he heard of an outbreak of bovine influenza cause the military to interject. Or corpses to have black liquid instead of blood.

Yeosang did laugh, unexpectedly.

“Sorry, that was just… I don’t know. I think I’m kind of hysterical right now and raging through fifty different emotions at once,” Yeosang explained, eating another cookie. “A virus, huh?”

“Yeah.” Wooyoung nodded.

“Maybe it is.”

Yeosang offered him a cookie and Wooyoung took it, despite having his own cookies lying in his lap.

“I’ve seen… I’ve seen this one man, he was, I don’t know, weird, and attacked us. Me and the soldier,” he started to retell the events, for no reason, except that he just needed to talk about it with someone. Yeosang listened, his attention on Wooyoung. “The soldier shot him and-and the man didn’t bleed. It was so weird. He looked so fucked up… In the face, and his eyes… I don’t know,” he finished with a shaky voice, not sure how to explain what he had seen without breaking apart.

“I know what you mean,” Yeosang spoke up after a while. He stared ahead, unblinkly and blankly, like a stature. “I didn’t even get home because someone or-or some_thing _ tackled me while I was waiting at a red light. Thankfully I managed to escape… Threw my bike on the-the thing, then I ran.” He paused, eating another cookie. “The thing that attacked me. The eyes weren’t human. The pupil was… distorted and too big. And the skin, it looked dead.”

Wooyoung nodded, remembering the appearance of whatever had attacked him and the soldier.

“The guard said a captain would come to explain whatever is going on,” Wooyoung started up after another silence had spread over the two boys. “Do you want to head out and see if they already arrived?”

“Sure,” Yeosang agreed, easily. “Let me just wash my face.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think so far ! :)


	2. Corpse Roads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wooyoung bumped into a frighteningly familiar face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there are a couple of time hops here, it's sort of a filler in chapter I guess!
> 
> tw for mentions of suicide!! also just blood and zombie things idk, it's not much but just in case!!!
> 
> love you all!!!

It was as if everything collapsed in Wooyoung’s mind and left were the words the captain had said, on loop and numbing him.

Now it was Wooyoung’s turn to run to the bathroom and have a breakdown. He didn’t throw up, thankfully, but he did slide down onto the floor next to one of the urinals, clutching his knees tightly as he stared at the dirty white tiles of the bathroom. This couldn’t be real, he thought, bewildered, but it was. The captain had said so. Reports of people climbing out of their graves. (_Their graves!_) Like those god damn zombie movies Wooyoung’s brother loved to watch so much.

He hoped his family was still alive, he didn’t know what he’d do if they were to be dead.

Another scary thought that roamed through his mind was San. 

Choi San who had died last year, without any warning. Wooyoung didn’t like to think about it, it made him angry and helpless and guilty… He wondered if San was walking through the neighborhood now, as an undead corpse. He shuddered at the thought.

Yeosang came in, holding a bottle of water and the same pack of cookies, and sat down next to Wooyoung. He unscrewed the bottle and held it out for Wooyoung to take, who shook his head. He was weak and shaky, and with tears spilling out of his eyes, silently crying. So Yeosang took it upon himself to make sure Wooyoung stayed hydrated, putting the rim of the bottle against his lips and tipped it over. Wooyoung tried his best to drink the water, the icy cold liquid shocked his body and mind. 

Slowly the numbness subsided.

Wooyoung blinked, glaring at the bright white walls, the disturbed murmurs coming from outside the bathroom sounded too loud. A headache was forming behind his eyelids and tiredness suddenly overwhelmed him. He took a look at Yeosang next to him, who had been mostly a stranger—one with whom he had shared a couple of classes with for the past few years—not even 24 hours ago, but now slowly becoming his anchor through this traumatic experience.

“Can you hold my hand?” Wooyoung asked in a whisper, and Yeosang nodded, settling down next to him.

They sat in silence for a long time. 

That was the beginning of a strong friendship, supporting each other emotionally when they got the bad news that Yeosang’s parents were in the list of the deceased ones—except for Yeosang’s aunt, Heejin, who was in the hospital—and so was Wooyoung’s dad—thankfully his mom and brother were alive and well. 

Once the city managed to deal with the _ rotters _ (as they started to call the people that had risen out of their graves), they installed several buildings where the survivors could stay at to sleep, eat, receive medical attention, and for those that were able and of age, undergo training to fight off the rotters. Daily life became a constant loop of surviving and hoping the military would defeat the monsters soon, that normalcy would return.

The truth for Wooyoung and Yeosang was waking up early each morning, train for hours, learn how to shoot guns, undergo therapy to work through their traumas… Only three months ago Wooyoung’s biggest worry was how to tell his mom why he got into detention all the time, worry about visiting San’s grave without breaking down, and what to do once high school was over… Now, he barely had time to sit down and breathe, which had its perks, in a way, because it meant he couldn’t really spiral since he had so much to do and there was no space to think. But it also meant that once the new year would start, he was going to be sent out onto the streets to patrol. 

Not alone, of course, but still, it terrified him.

It was a late November afternoon, Wooyoung had sweat rolling down the sides of his face, his clothes stuck to his body, and his hair was moist and messy. He had been training for three hours straight with barely any breaks in between, even if the rest of the group had left and his teacher had told him not to over do it, Wooyoung felt a deep need to keep going and going _and going_. Throw one punch after another onto the boxing sack, kick it with all his might.

The sun had hidden behind the taller buildings of Seoul and the light inside the room came from a weak light bulb hanging from the ceiling, so the room grew to become long and tall shadows all around Wooyoung. Something about the atmosphere, how it felt as if he was alone in the world, made him seize the boxing sack with a different kind of reason behind his punches. 

He punched out his anger and pain and guilt and fear, as tears mixed with the sweat.

“Wooyoung,” came Yeosang’s voice at some point, startling Wooyoung out of his punching. 

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the moment he stopped and turned around to look at the entrance of the training room, where Yeosang’s small figure stood in contrast to the lit hallway, he felt so incredibly tired. His arms and legs hurt, and he wanted to just let himself fall onto the wooden floor and fall asleep.

Fall asleep and never wake up.

“Wooyoung,” Yeosang repeated and walked up to him, he held a bag with something. “You should stop. It’s late.”

Wooyoung sighed, slumping down onto the floor. He started to remove the bandages from around his hands. There were small cuts on his knuckles and the skin on his hands was dry, his eczema acting up under these stressful days. Plus he hadn’t really been looking much after his body, too tired to do so, too distracted with bigger matters to focus on than self care. The itching was mostly in the background, an accompanying bothersome _ something _ that reminded him he was alive.

Yeosang sat down next to him and pulled out several snacks from the bag and a bottle of water. He handed the bottle to Wooyoung and started opening the diverse snacks so the two of them could dig in. Wooyoung took the bottle, their hands brushing, and Yeosang gasped.

“Your hand,” Yeosang said, sounding affronted, and took Wooyoung’s free hand in his, delicately rubbing his thumb over the cuts and open wounds. He tsked and shook his head. “You have to take better care of yourself,” he scolded him.

Wooyoung shrugged, chugging down the water.

“It’s okay.”

“No, look at your hand, that’s not okay.”

Before Wooyoung could keep protesting, Yeosang stood up and yelled a quick, _ be right back _ over his shoulder as he left the training room. For a moment Wooyoung thought that he maybe had pissed him off or something. He knew he could be abrasive and annoying and unfriendly, he knew the First Rising had changed him even more and pushed him to be cold at heart. Wooyoung knew he had become hard to digest, but with Yeosang it was different. They always somehow managed to work together, no matter what poisonous words Wooyoung spoke or what insecurities swallowed Yeosang, they worked well together.

Ten minutes later and Yeosang was back, he held a small tube in his hand. He sat down in the same spot he had been sitting in before leaving, and took Wooyoung’s hands. Then he uncapped the tube, poured some lotion on each of Wooyoung’s hands and started to massage it into them until there was nothing left.

“Take care of yourself,” Yeosang repeat and threw the tube into Wooyoung’s lap.

“Thank you.”

Yeosang only hummed, eyebrows furrowed. He grabbed one of the snack packs and started eating, not acknowledging Wooyoung in any way.

Wooyoung on the other hand couldn’t stop staring at his friend. The action had been so unwarranted and unexpected, and kind. A type of kindness Wooyoung hadn’t encountered in over a year, since San’s death, and that was hard for him to deal with. He always felt like he wasn’t worthy of anyone’s kindness, but Yeosang didn’t seem to mind Wooyoung’s flaws, he even seemed to look past them often. The thought made Wooyoung’s inside grow warm, fluttering feelings unfolding. He looked away quickly, caging those butterflies before they could fully fly. He didn’t need those kind of feelings right now, they were a luxury in times like these. 

Wooyoung couldn’t afford a crush, he’d feel terribly guilty. Besides part of him was still holding on to San.

He felt terrible all of a sudden.

With January came the snow and a new low in temperatures. 

It fitted the glacial coldness in Wooyoung’s heart. He had been doing good in pushing everything aside, especially now that he was patrolling and more often than not had to use his gun. Had to witness how one of his colleagues got killed by rotters. Had death staring right at him, ready to take him, but miraculously Wooyoung escaped death a lot. Life had changed a lot ever since the patrols, the whole zombie thing became even realer. Thoughts such as _ is this it?_, crossed Wooyoung’s mind a lot.

Was this going to be the rest of his life?

At least Yeosang was still by his side, surviving and living on quietly, supporting Wooyoung and mending his soul. If before they had become each other’s anchors, it was nothing compared to the kind of emotional support they presented to one another now. Things had become worse, harsher, the reality of the kind of life they were trapped in terrifyingly clear. It was a lot to deal with, but they managed. 

It was a quiet kind of comfort. Powerful, but quiet.

It was on one of their patrols, late January, while Yeosang and Wooyoung were cruising a pharmacy to restock on certain hygienic products, that Wooyoung bumped into a frighteningly familiar face. 

It was late afternoon, their team of three down to two. Their colleague had been attacked and dragged inside. It had been gruesome, his terrified and agony filled screams would haunt Wooyoung for a while—like all the other deaths he had witnessed—but at least his death promised that the rotters in the area were fed and would, most likely, ignore Wooyoung and Yeosang.

Wooyoung was crouching in one of the aisles, about to quietly make his way over to the next one, when he got a clear vision onto the rotters. A broken light in the pharmacy flickered, illuminating the faces of the rotters eating the young soldier on the floor, and Wooyoung wished he wouldn’t have looked, that he would’ve just kept walking with his head bowed low.

San stood in the pharmacy, bending over the body, and when he spotted Wooyoung he went still, his monstrous face empty and blank, but he didn’t ambush his old friend—which Wooyoung believed had to count for something. Blood dripped from his mouth, his hands bloody. It was a frightening sight.

Wooyoung raised his gun, not sure what he should do. A million thoughts crossed his mind. Mostly he felt numb though. 

He couldn’t shoot San, even if he was a rotter. 

“Wooyoung, what are—” came Yeosang’s distressed voice, gun in hand, and he was about to shoot San, but he stopped as he soon as he realized who it was and why Wooyoung stood unmoving and terrified. “Ah, _ shit_!” He grabbed Wooyoung by his backpack and pushed him back, behind an aisle full of laxatives and medicaments of the sort. Yeosang waited, checked on him, always with one eye on the place the rotters were currently eating their ex colleague.

“He is alive…” Wooyoung mumbled.

“Er, I wouldn’t really call it that but…” Yeosang said, frowning slightly at the unresponsive and numb state Wooyoung was in. “I guess, yeah, he-he isn’t rotting away in his um, grave.” He swallowed, clearly uncomfortable with the topic and unsure what to say.

Wooyoung couldn’t blame him, this was a strange, gray territory. Because San still looked like San, maybe his skin was a bit ashy and covered in blood, his clothes ripped and dirty, his hair sticky and unwashed, underneath his nails there was soil and dried blood… He looked horrible, really, but those were San’s eyes—given, his pupils looked all fucked up,_ but it was San, _ _damn it_. It was Wooyoung’s best friend and the boy who he once would have given his entire world to—probably would still, under different circumstances. 

But he was a rotter too.

“We should leave,” said Yeosang then, pulling at Wooyoung to follow him out of the pharmacy.

They managed to get out undetected through the back door and walked down the shabby back alley until they reached the main road, from there it was a short distance to the base they had been assigned to—an old cinema that once had the purpose of showing black and white movies only.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Yeosang asked when they walked up a flight of stairs, it was a shortcut they often took, even if they weren’t supposed to as the area was still dangerous.

“No. I really don’t.” Wooyoung sped up his tempo, taking two stairs at a time, his hands balled into fists.

“Wooyoung,” Yeosang called out, following him quickly. He reached out his hand to grab the other’s and stop him. With a swift motion he turned Wooyoung around, staring at him with a scolding look, but there was softness there too. “Don’t shut me out and don’t bottle this up. That’s unhealthy.”

Wooyoung sighed, nibbled at his bottom lip, and searched Yeosang’s face.

In the past months that they had grown close, given the circumstances, he supposed it was normal for people to bond this quickly. They relied on one another, maybe more than what was healthy, but it wasn’t as if anyone could tell them how to deal with their grief and trauma, especially when everything was still so unstable and uncertain. Every moment that Yeosang and Wooyoung went on patrols they didn’t know if they’d make it to the next hour, if they’d survive the day or night. So they had grown very dependant, and looked out for one another, checked if the other was having a rough time or was handling it well.

“I know. I was just surprised. I knew that-that he probably would be a… One of _them_,” Wooyoung explained, looking away. He could feel his eyes sting with tears. “It just caught me unprepared. Even if… I just didn’t think I would actually see him again and—It’s—” He broke off, his throat tightening. He would be crying soon enough. Yeosang took a step closer and swung his arms around Wooyoung’s shoulder to draw him in.

“I’m sorry,” was all he said, but Wooyoung appreciated it.

At the time Wooyoung had thought that that would be the worst, but it was nothing compared to the moment their government announced that they had developed a cure for the rotters—now to be called Partially Dead Syndrome sufferers, or for short PDS sufferers. A cure that would make them human again, or as human as the undead could be. 

The true horror started the day Wooyoung got a call towards mid December in 2017, when his recently formed circle of friends was debating whether they were going to celebrate New Year’s Eve or patrol the street just in case.

“I think we deserve a break,” said Kim Hongjoong, a guy a year older than them, who was a terrible shooter but incredibly smart. He was talking about leaving the HVF (Human Volunteer Force) as he didn’t see a point in fighting rotters anymore, Wooyoung wasn’t sure he could agree. Some of the still roamed the world, ready to attack.

“A break would be nice,” agreed Yeosang, surprising Wooyoung.

Before Wooyoung could add in, his phone rang, and he pulled it out, the unknown number threw him off, but he picked it up nonetheless.

“Hello? Who is this?” 

“Hello, this is Lee Minhyuk, from the PDS Treatment Facility. Am I speaking with Jeong Wooyoung?” 

“Yes.” Wooyoung felt chills run through his body. “What is this about?” he asked.

“As you may know, the first group of PDS, or Partially Dead Syndrome sufferers, are getting released soon and sent to their respective families or friends. We are calling you to tell you that a PDS sufferer is requesting to stay with you and if you will accept this request,” Minhyuk explained, voice monotone.

Wooyoung coughed, eyeing the group he was sitting with, all of them wearing their HVF badges and anti-rotters pins. He swallowed and got up, excusing himself quietly as he walked out to the hallway of the apartment.

“Who-who is requesting?” Wooyoung asked once he was alone, his throat feeling too dry. It couldn’t be, could it?

“Choi San,” came the reply. Wooyoung felt as though his entire world was collapsing over him, weighing down on his shoulders. “He says you know him. His family is mostly deceased and his grandparents refused to even acknowledge him,” Minhyuk sounded sympathetic as he said that. “He said you two have been friends since you were children…” 

“Yeah, we are… Were. I-I uh, when would he be released?”

“The official release is next Friday, on the 19th.”

“I don’t know… I just—” He was shaking now, unsure what he was even supposed to say. His throat was tightening up and his mind was swimming.

“We understand that it might be really difficult, which is why we offer therapy to make it easier for you to face your friend again after er, everything.”

Before Wooyoung could really register it, he mumbled out an, “Okay,” and hung up the phone. He broke down, his legs giving away.

He drew his knees in and hugged them, hiding his head as tears started to flow out of his eyes. He was going to see San again, this time not as a mindless and hungry monster, but as something akin to his best friend, Choi San, who had taken his own life two years ago. The thought was too much and Wooyoung convulsed, nearly throwing up.

The door opened and someone stepped towards him, they crouched down and soon Wooyoung felt a warm hand on his shoulders, drawing soothing circles.

“It’s okay,” said Yeosang. “It’ll be okay,” he said as if he knew over what Wooyoung was breaking down. Maybe he did. Maybe he had gotten a call as well. “I’ll be by your side through it all,” he promised.

Wooyoung held up his left arm, his hand stretched out towards the general direction his friend was sitting at, and seconds later Yeosang intertwined their fingers together.

Facing San again was horrible. 

The moment the door opened and the doctor walked out of his office with San in tow—San who didn’t look like a monster anymore, his skin covered in thick makeup, contact lenses put in, and his dark brown hair washed and parted in the middle, resembling the sweet boy he once had been—Wooyoung felt himself shake and tears cascading out of his eyes. Everything he had so carefully held back and avoided to feel came crashing down on him with a force he didn’t believe was possible.

When San had killed himself two years prior, Wooyoung had been at a loss of words, and instead of allowing himself to feel any of the emotions that had visited him, he had acted out at school and gotten into fights. Then the First Rising had happened and those terrible few days in which Wooyoung hadn’t known if his parents were still alive or not—and the overwhelming relief he had felt once he discovered they were alive—had added onto the, as it seemed, ever growing list of pain and grief and anger. All those negative emotions were stacking up and Wooyoung had kept ignoring them.

Until then.

Until San’s reappearance, looking alive and well, and not a bloody corpse lying on the white tiles of the bathroom. Not a monster feeding off of a human. No, this was San, before any of the tragedies had hit, and Wooyoung couldn’t handle it. He had missed him so terribly, he had missed his own dorky and free self of back then.

Yeosang held Wooyoung tightly, whispering soothing things to him, as he tried to communicate with San through his eyes.

San just stood there awkwardly. “Hi,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I-I’m sorry.”

“Give him a minute, please,” Yeosang told him, his heart breaking with the way Wooyoung was shaking violently in his arms and sobbing loudly. It was a haunting sound. “He’s…” he trailed off, unsure what to say; it was obvious what Wooyoung was going through.

“Yeah.” San nodded and moved to stand near them, playing with the sleeves of his oversized sweatshirt. 

The doctor explained something about the medication San had to receive, handed in a pamphlet with information, and informed Yeosang and Wooyoung about the therapy groups they should consider attending, shooting a meaningful glance towards the latter. After making sure things were set he left, leaving the three boys alone.

The moment Wooyoung had calmed down and was ready to face San, Yeosang left the scene, feeling awkward and too out of place. It wasn’t his to witness this. He had barely known San, though he had attended his funeral, but only out of courtesy, like the rest of the classmates. He remembered seeing how devastated Wooyoung had looked back then, so resigned to accept the truth. He remembered how Wooyoung had acted out in school after that, becoming a bit of a bully, but Yeosang never really thought bad of him because he imagined pain like that changed a human.

Yeosang had lost most of his family and it had made his little heart a bit colder. Thankfully Wooyoung had been by his side through the hell that had been the previous year, and he knew that he was the reason why Yeosang still held a candle in his hand, full of hope and warmth for the future days. 

San and Wooyoung stood there for a while, just staring at each other, the latter in awe and fear and on the brink of having another breakdown.

“Wooyoung, I,” San started, swallowed, and tried again. “I am terribly sorry for-for… I just-just couldn’t. Life was dreadful and I—”

“There wasn’t even a note, San!” Wooyoung shouted, his voice emotionally loaded, visibly shaking. “Not a word. And I waited and waited, and-and when I went to your house…”

“I’m sorry,” San said again and hesitantly took a step forward. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, this time in a whisper.

“There was so much blood and your-your eyes…” Wooyoung reached out his fist and punched San’s chest weakly, crying again. San finally hugged him tightly, and Wooyoung hugged back, crying again. “I’ve missed you,” Wooyoung said.

“I’m here now,” San promised.

And that was that. Wooyoung’s first ghost.


	3. Beekeeper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wooyoung knew it should be different now, that he had grown and learned, but his first reaction to the silent feelings, that were floating to the surface, was to run away and hide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY so this one is very uhhh angsty and BIG TW towards the ending as a character will die, IT IS TEMPORARY!!!! So don't worry!!
> 
> Still, very sad, might've made myself cry lol

After San was back Wooyoung quit the HVF together with Yeosang and Hongjoong.

Hongjoong never really had shown much enthusiasm for the Human Volunteer Force, his morals clashing with the obvious hate most of the participants held in their hearts—understandably so, in Wooyoung’s opinion. The rotters had caused a lot of havoc and pain in the hearts of those that had survived the First Rising, a lot of HVF had suffered at the hands of the undead, they had lost people they loved—lost their will to live. Wooyoung could see why a lot of HVF were pissed off, resentful, and not on board with giving the rotters a comfortable reintegration into society. 

Hongjoong only had been in the HVF because his father had been, the moment the cure was announced and that it was working, when those first results were shown on TV, Hongjoong didn’t take long to sympathize with the rotters and reveal that he was going to leave as soon as he discussed the topic with his father. As expected, it didn’t end well, Hongjoong’s father saw his own son as a traitor now, called him weak and pathetic. But Hongjoong wore many other scars in his heart already, it wasn’t the first time his father called him those words, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Wooyoung didn’t know much about Hongjoong, he was secretive and stern. A serious looking young man, his eyes showing a soul much older than he actually was. So it came as a surprise to Wooyoung when Hongjoong called him one evening in early February, telling him he found a cheap enough flat—which was a miracle in Seoul, especially after the First Rising—and was looking for a flatmate, and if Wooyoung was interested.

Since December, Wooyoung and San had been living with Wooyoung’s brother, who was in the military and soon would move to live in the dormitories, which meant the current flat would get dissolved, meaning Wooyoung and San would end up homeless. Yeosang had been living with his aunt Heejin, but her flat was way too small to take in another person—it was barely enough to house Yeosang.

“I mean, yeah, I would be interested,” Wooyoung told Hongjoong, surprised. They got along, but Hongjoong always had taken more of an interest in Yeosang than Wooyoung. “But er, I’m currently still jobless so I can’t really pay the rent for right now…”

“That’s fine,” Hongjoong said, his voice sounded muffled through the phone. “We’ll figure something out. I’m working at this shop, maybe you could apply too?” he offered.

“Yeah, maybe.” Wooyoung nodded. He was sitting on a stool in his brother’s kitchen. San was lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling. He did that a lot these days. “I’ll think about it, hyung.”

“All right.”

Wooyoung hung up and discarded his phone on the notebook filled with math formulas in front of him.

Now that the First Rising was over and the HVF wasn’t really needed anymore, Wooyoung could concentrate on his future again, even if he had lost all sense of direction now. He studied a lot these days so he could take exams in summer to finalize his high school education and possibly start studying with Yeosang and Hongjoong during fall that year. 

(They were still working on laws for the PDS sufferers, so for now San wasn’t allowed to study. Not that he did show much interest in it anyway.)

“Hey, San,” he called out. San moved his head to look at him, waiting. “Do you already know where you’ll be going once my hyung kicks us out?” he asked bluntly, there was no point in beating around the bush.

San sighed, sitting up. He passed a hand through his dark brown hair.

“I may have a place to stay at…” he said, slowly, and glanced at Wooyoung, the ‘but’ heavy in the air.

“What?” 

“You’re not going to like it.”

“San, what is it?” Wooyoung insisted, walking into the living room.

“It’s ah, with a fellow PDS sufferer,” San said, which wasn’t necessarily bad, Wooyoung supposed.

“Okay…” Wooyoung said, sitting down next to his friend. 

His skin prickled once he was close enough to San and could see the outline of the make up, where he hadn’t applied it well enough, and the scentlessness San had acquired after rising. It made Wooyoung’s heart ache, San’s scent once had made him feel at home—now it was gone. The sense of home San always had given him was just as gone. It pained him more than he liked to admit.

“You’re not bothered?” his friend asked, eyebrows raised. San gave him an incredulous look, surprised that Wooyoung wasn’t putting up a fight.

“I mean… It’s part of-of our lives now, isn’t it?” he reasoned. “The sooner I accept that you’re a uh, PDS sufferer; that there are people who are PDS sufferers…” He shrugged, looking away from San. “It’s time I accept the truth.”

San was silent for a moment, then he smiled. “Yeah.” 

Even if Wooyoung had said that, he didn’t know how long it would truly take him to accept the truth. He knew that even if San was back, he wasn’t the same. Wooyoung wasn’t the same. But he tried to ignore that. Right now he was just glad he had an excuse to distance himself from San, because it still hurt him seeing his old friend, he still struggled to look past the rough year he had left behind him, in which he had been fighting those like San. The amount of times Wooyoung had nearly been mauled to death by a rotter, the amount of times he had feared Yeosang would die at the hands of rotters… He couldn’t just leave all those memories and feelings behind himself.

He couldn’t just look at San and forget the last time he had seen him before the First Rising. He couldn’t forget the day San had been buried.

Wooyoung swallowed past the knot in his throat and gave San a shaky smile.

“Well, I better get back to studying,” he muttered and got up to walk over to where his notes were. 

Wooyoung grabbed his phone and sent out a message to Yeosang, asking him if he wanted to meet up. The reply came after five minutes, in which Wooyoung had tried to understand math but had failed miserably at it because the numbers kept swimming around in his mind, giving him a headache.

Yeosang had managed to get a job fairly quick after his departure from the HVF. He was working at a small skateboard shop near the university they both had thought about applying at—where Hongjoong wanted to study at as well.

(Truth be told, Wooyoung hadn’t really been looking very efficiently for jobs, something about the future being regular and normal and human terrified him. Working a job so he could pay rent, study something so he could work a nice job later in the future… He still felt as if he was surrounded by fog and couldn’t see what was two feet in front of him, too afraid to move anywhere so he stood still—stagnant. The First Rising was still too fresh for him to go back to worrying about what to do with his future. He hadn’t known two years ago, and he still didn’t.)

“I’m going out!” Wooyoung called out as he put on a thick winter coat and a beanie. San gave him a thumbs up. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Okay!” San said, drawing out the ‘a’.

When the door closed behind him he let out a heavy sigh.

They met at a coffee shop near the university that a lot of students frequented. Yeosang liked to meet up there, pretend they were already students, pretend their lives were normal. Wooyoung thought it was nice, part of him couldn’t wait to have a sense of normalcy back.

Yeosang was wearing a baby blue beanie, his skin pale due to the lack of sun, and heavy bags under his eyes. He held two cups of coffee that he brought over to the table they were sitting at; to Wooyoung’s right there was a big window showing the street life. The thin snow, the colorful lights of the shops bright as the color in the sky turned darker. It made him miss Christmas, the kind of Christmas he had as a child.

He sighed and smiled tiredly at Yeosang.

“How was your shift?” he asked and took the cup that had his name scribbled on the side.

“Exhausting,” Yeosang complained once he was sitting. He was taking off his thick bomber jacket, but left on his beanie. “I mean it’s nice enough, I guess, but today I was alone from morning until noon and… Ugh.” He pouted.

“At least you’re making money…” Wooyoung pointed out.

Yeosang smiled a small smile, not really reaching his eyes. “Yeah.”

“I still haven’t found a job and by March I’ll be homeless…” he said after a small silence, feeling uncomfortable talking about this.

“I can help you find a job,” Yeosang offered, tone hesitantly. “If you want to.”

Wooyoung nodded his head. “That’d be nice.”

They fell into a somewhat awkward silence, and Wooyoung realized why that was. They didn’t really know one another. They weren’t strangers because what they had gone through was the kind of traumatic experience that bonded two people in a strong yet fucked up way, but now that normalcy was returning, they needed to bond like other humans did. Like they would’ve bonded back in high school given the chance, or how they’d bond once they start university.

Become friends through the normal kind of way.

Wooyoung swallowed, feeling exposed and awkward. “Um, what-what’s your favorite kind of food?”

Yeosang looked at him perplexed, then he smiled amusedly. “Chicken.”

Wooyoung laughed. “That’s so basic.”

“Hey!” Yeosang protested, kicking Wooyoung lightly. “Then, what about you? What’s your favorite food?”

Wooyoung shrugged. “Not sure. I do like chicken a lot too. I’m a big fan of spicy food.”

“I know a place that serves the best spicy noodles, and they have this really good grilled beef. Ugh, just thinking about it…” Yeosang closed his eyes, pretending he was in bliss. Wooyoung laughed.

“Take me there someday.” He meant for it to sound harmless, but he could feel his ears grow warm, and the thought _ what the fuck _ crossed his mind repeatedly. He sat up straight, trying to seem nonchalant and unbothered. He grabbed his cup of coffee and took a way too big gulp, nearly choking. He tried to cover it up with an elegant cough. This was going great. “I-I mean…” 

“Sure,” Yeosang agreed, easily. He smiled, not having noticed the obvious discomfort Wooyoung had gone through in the past few seconds. “Just let me check my schedule and we could maybe go this week.”

“Cool.”

“So, how is it going with San?” Yeosang asked before the two could fall into another weird silence.

Wooyoung sighed and pressed his lips together, clearing out his thoughts and trying to find an answer.

“You can be honest with me,” Yeosang promised him.

“I… It’s weird,” Wooyoung finally settled for saying. “Very weird.”

“In what way?”

“It’s awkward. I thought reconnecting with him would be easy and that—I don’t know, I thought that I would be over uh, well, everything… But I’m not, and it’s hard to deal with it and deal with San right-right _there_. I don’t really feel comfortable,” Wooyoung answered, allowing himself to be honest for the first time in a long time with someone other than himself. “And I feel bad about it because clearly San is uncomfortable himself and dealing with his own stuff. And he isn’t a monster anymore, but… I just, I don’t know.” He bit the inside of his cheek and started to unconsciously jiggle his leg under the table. 

Yeosang gave him a sympathetic look, he reached out his hand as if he wanted to comfort Wooyoung but then seemed to think better of it, letting it float awkwardly in the air before he retreated it, letting it fall onto his lap. He licked his lips and avoided looking at Wooyoung.

“I think it’s valid what you’re going through,” he ended up saying.

“I don’t know,” Wooyoung said, staring at the now dark sky outside. “I really don’t know anymore, Yeosang, what to think and how to act. I feel confused and—”

“It’s okay. You… We went through a very traumatic experience and healing from it might take years, give yourself time,” Yeosang told him, but the way he said it sounded more like a practiced sentence. A mantra that he repeated for himself, something he needed to remember. 

Maybe Wooyoung should start telling himself that too.

“And-and the thing is that San isn’t really himself anymore. At least not the San I once knew. At first I thought he was the same boy I-I… But he’s not, and I don’t know how to,” he moved his hand in the air, trying to find the right words. “Connect with his um, current self.”

Yeosang sighed, bit his lip, and looked up at Wooyoung. “Have you thought of seeking out a therapist?” he asked, a bit shyly.

Wooyoung had thought about it, especially since right after the First Rising they had received some counselling to deal with the aftermath of the tragedy, but once Wooyoung and Yeosang had started patrolling that had stopped and from then on they had learnt to deal with shit on their own. Ever since the cure got announced, ever since San came back, Wooyoung had contemplated going to therapy but never quite committed to it. He wasn’t sure how to start talking, it felt like too much.

“I’m not sure that would help…” he just said.

“I-I’ve been going,” Yeosang admitted then, quietly. “It has been helpful for me.”

“Oh?”

“At first it was hard opening up, but she told me to just talk about whatever was on my mind that day, and somehow, in the end, I had begun to open up…” Yeosang explained, reaching out to grasp the cup of coffee but not to drink, just so he could do something with his hands. “My nightmares have started to stop, you know? She prescribed me some anxiety meds and they help, they really do. But mostly the talking… Just being able to speak openly about what crosses my mind, to speak of my pain and anger, and-and… It helps so much.” 

Wooyoung gazed at him, then looked away. It was strange, they always had shared their emotions during the First Rising, seeing each other break apart more than once, but Wooyoung supposed it was more out of urgency than anything else. This right here was Yeosang opening up to him because he trusted him, because he wanted to, not because he didn’t have anyone else; not because they were on the brink of death every single day and didn’t want to go alone.

“I think it could help you as well,” Yeosang said, unsure if Wooyoung wanted to hear it or not.

“I’ll-I’ll think about it.”

“Sorry,” Yeosang apologized then, laughing awkwardly. “This is weird, isn’t it?”

Wooyoung exhaled, then smiled. “Yes, it kind of is.”

“I feel as though I have forgotten how to be human, like… How to behave in society.”

“Me, too. I’m glad not to be the only one that feels all fucked up and disconnected about having to go back to ‘normal’,” he said, using his fingers to put quotation marks around the last word.

“I think we can make it work, though,” Yeosang told him, smiling. It was hopeful and soft, even more so in the lighting of the coffee shop and the different, colorful lights from outside. Everything together just made Yeosang look so different from the person Wooyoung had met and gotten to know in the past year and a half. “I believe in us!” he exclaimed and threw his fist in the air in an encouraging manner. “Fighting, Wooyoung!”

Wooyoung’s heart squeezed at that. This rather cute and boyishly youthful side of Yeosang that Wooyoung never had gotten to know, was incredibly endearing.

“Fighting!” he said back with a faint smile gracing his lips.

“Hey, so,” Yeosang said as they were exiting the shop an hour later. They had spent the time talking about unimportant business, getting to know one another in an awkward but fun way. (It reminded Wooyoung a lot of first dates, but he had pushed that thought far away.) “I was wondering…”

“What?” 

Yeosang bit his lip, his eyelashes fluttering as he looked at the snow-covered street. They were hurriedly walking to the other side of the street, where they could take their bus back towards the shop Yeosang worked at as he had left his belongings there.

“Well, they’re showcasing the new Marvel movie in the cinema near my aunt’s flat…” Yeosang continued saying hesitantly. “I haven’t watched a movie in a cinema for quite some time and I was wondering if you want to go watch the movie?” he asked, stumbling over his words. 

Even in the darkness Wooyoung could see the redness in Yeosang’s cheeks. He tried not to think about it too much, not to think about how this could be seen as a date—because it wasn’t,_ it really wasn’t_—, but his dumb heart and his deep buried desire to be loved and love someone got the best of him for a second, and he stopped walking to stare dumbfounded at Yeosang. He opened his mouth and closed it again, trying to find an answer. Yeosang stopped as well, turning around. The bright light from the lamp at the bus stop shadowed Yeosang’s face, so Wooyoung couldn’t see what expression he held.

“Um… _ Tonight _?” Wooyoung asked, his voice cracking a bit. He felt embarrassed but didn’t look away, instead he took a few steps closer to his friend so he could see his face properly.

“Sure, if you want to?” Yeosang answered, unsure. “But I was thinking more about the weekend… Then we could also go eat at the spicy noodles place,” he kept saying. “Maybe Hongjoong hyung would want to tag along, he looks like a Marvel fan…” he further elaborated.

_ Of course _. Wooyoung felt dumb. The need to laugh at his own naivety and selfish thoughts was strong but he swallowed it; he ignored the prickliness of his skin and the sweat in his lower back. He shrugged, nonchalantly.

“Sure. Text me the details,” he said coolly and walked past Yeosang to the bus stop. _ Stupid, stupid, stupid _, he chastised himself.

First he had fallen in love with San, years ago, and had acted all kinds of stupid—maybe even hurting San in the process. He had been overbearing and obnoxious, and pushy, but ultimately too much of a coward. The idea that San’s death had been his fault often crossed his mind, even if San had assured him that Wooyoung hadn’t been at fault. It pushed Wooyoung to believe that his love was harmful. The rational part of his brain of course knew that it wasn’t, that he had been young at the time and scared of coming out, of confronting his family with his sexuality…

Wooyoung knew it should be different now, that he had grown and learned, but his first reaction to the silent feelings, that were floating to the surface, was to run away and hide. He was afraid of that normalcy because he’d have to face himself in a way he hadn’t ever really been able to do.

Yeosang approached him, his footsteps emitting a crunchy sound in the snow, and for some reason even that made Wooyoung’s heart ache, he felt overly sensitive in that moment. He bit his lip to keep himself in check, then he turned around to stand face to face with Yeosang, as they waited for their bus.

“Are you okay?” Yeosang asked.

“Yes, I’m okay. Are _ you _?” Wooyoung asked back, raising his eyebrows.

Yeosang cocked his head, searching his face. Usually Wooyoung wouldn’t shy away from his searching gaze, he had gotten quite used to it, but the reason for his emotional turbulence in that moment was something that felt so much bigger and more dreadful than fighting rotters ever had felt. Wooyoung was afraid of his feelings, especially since they involved other boys, and he never thought he had to confront that side of himself.

“I think I will be,” Yeosang finally answered, he smiled prettily.

Before Wooyoung could do anything dumb, like get lost in Yeosang’s eyes, their bus hissed loudly as it stopped, drawing them out of their small bubble.

After Wooyoung moved in with Hongjoong, and San moved to stay with his friend, their friendship started to crumble apart in a silent manner. They both tried to ignore it, but it was obvious. Wooyoung’s friendship with Hongjoong grew stronger in its place, and the tentative new way he was getting to know Yeosang kept him from feeling all too fucked up about possibly losing San.

There were, of course, the recent tragic news of PDS sufferers lashing out and hurting or killing humans, the common factor in all of these attacks: a blue pill. They seemed to snort the substance and seconds later the treatment they had undergone to be able to live in society would vanish, making them become their untreated selves again. _Monsters again_. Wooyoung tried to ignore these cases, they were few, and mostly happening in other countries. He hadn’t heard of any happen in Seoul so far, the strict regulations of drugs making it hard for the blue pills to be distributed in South Korea.

Towards the end of March, Wooyoung finally found a job, not where Yeosang worked and not where Hongjoong worked, instead it was in a small travel agency. He mostly did their administrative work, ordering papers and answering emails. It was calming and helped him organize his own self.

Wooyoung still didn’t attend therapy, but he had started to open up to Hongjoong, who seemed to be able to empathize with Wooyoung, even if he didn’t necessarily agree, he listened and gave advice. And most importantly, he hugged him and helped his hand when Wooyoung woke up from a nightmare; gave him reassuring smiles. Hongjoong replaced Wooyoung’s older brother, who had never quite understood Wooyoung, not even before the First Rising or San’s death.

Wooyoung was lying on the old couch in Hongjoong and his flat. He didn’t have work that day and he didn’t feel like meeting up with anyone, so he had decided to just laze around in the flat, hoping that he would get struck by inspiration or motivation to do something. He thought about studying, as the exams were coming up, but the thought alone made his brain hurt.

The main door buzzed open, a beeping noise announcing the arrival of someone, most likely Hongjoong as he always got back around this time.

“Wooyoung, help me carry the groceries inside!” Hongjoong called out, breathless.

Wooyoung sprang up from the couch, turning off the TV—he hadn’t really been paying attention to it anyway—, and ran towards the entrance of their flat. Hongjoong held several shopping bags, all loaded.

“What’s all this, hyung?” Wooyoung asked curiously as he helped carrying everything over to the kitchen.

“I’m hosting a party next weekend…” he answered, shrugging out of his coat and peeling off his scarf. His short brown hair was full of rain drops, standing up in different directions.

“Ah.” Wooyoung nodded. He unpacked the bags, coming across one particular object he wasn’t sure what to think of. “Red hair dye?” he wondered, raising his eyebrows at Hongjoong, who seemed embarrassed.

“Yes, you got a problem?” He walked into the kitchen to help Wooyoung.

“No, just didn’t expect you to be the kind to dye your hair, that’s all,” he said, shrugging. “Is there going to be someone special attending?” he asked and wiggled his eyebrows.

“No,” Hongjoong said, too quick and too loud.

“Who’s she?”

Hongjoong glared at him and didn’t answer the question.

“It’s just going to be a get together between old friends. It’s everyone from my senior year at school, we haven’t really hung out since you know…”

Wooyoung hummed. “Will you want the flat for yourself that day?”

Hongjoong grabbed a can of beer, popping it open with one finger.

“Not necessarily. I think you would get along with them.”

“I’ll see how I feel on that day, if not I’ll just hang out with Yeosang.”

“Or he could come as well…” Hongjoong offered.

“Eh, I’ll see.”

It was on a rainy April day, when the last coldness clung to the spring nights, that Hongjoong held his party. Wooyoung had ended up fleeing the flat, he did not really feel comfortable with the idea of spending his afternoon together with a bunch of strangers, so after work he had ended up going to the park where he used to hang out with San when they had been teenagers. 

He leaned against the fence of the park, behind him the skating rink where he knew Yeosang had once liked to skate at, and was waiting together with San for Yeosang to come back from the grocery store nearby. The awkwardness of hanging out alone with San, both of them knowing that they would rather not hang out, was suffocating.

Although Wooyoung and Yeosang weren’t in the HVF anymore and the military took care of those loose rotters that still roamed the borders of Seoul, and now those PDS sufferers that took the blue pills, Wooyoung still watched the area attentful. Not that without his HVF gun he would really be useful if a rotter decided to come at them, it was more of a habit to be watchful of his surroundings.

San he seemed nervous, eyeing the park around them with scared eyes and urging Wooyoung to go to the store where Yeosang was buying snacks instead of waiting in the darkness of the park.

“Yeosang’s gonna be back in a second and then we can leave to walk around in the streets instead. If you’re so scared of the park at night time,” Wooyoung said, playful and light tone.

“It’s not that…” San defended himself. “It’s just… Have you read the recent articles?” 

“Which ones?” Wooyoung asked, but he had a feeling he knew which ones. Despite South Korea’s strict drug regulations the blue pill had made it, some recent news of PDS sufferers lashing out making Seoul’s headlines.

“The ones about the blue pill,” San answered in a whisper.

“Yeah, I have. Why are you worried about them?” Wooyoung asked him, frowning. “Do you know any of the attackers? Or perhaps someone who might take it?”

“No. I mean, I know of whispers that go around in the undead scene, but…” He finished with a shrug, clearly uncomfortable about the topic.

Wooyoung had noticed that throughout the past months, San seemed to have difficulty between choosing to lie his trust in humans or his fellow PDS sufferers. Their failing friendship a proof of that.

“Would you tell me if you knew anything?” Wooyoung asked.

San gave him a look, searching his face, and hesitated before he answered, “Yes.”

The hesitation hurt, the overall mistrust San had towards him hurt, but it wasn’t as if Wooyoung was any better. He too didn’t fully trust San anymore, after all. Wooyoung looked at him and saw a stranger, the way San had changed so clear now, and he wondered why he hadn’t noticed it earlier.

The realization came at a strange time.

_ Huh _, he thought distracted. How much were his own changes visible on his face, in his expression? He knew he had become colder and that his morality was all messed up, especially now that PDS sufferers were reintegrated into society. He thought of those he had shot, who were someone’s loved ones, that could have been alive now, or as alive as the undead were, but at least they could have been walking around like San was. 

He swallowed thickly, the guilt already rising. This was why he didn’t think about it.

“Look, it’s Yeosang! Let’s go,” San said, pointing his index finger at the small figure approaching them in a jog.

Yeosang’s hands were empty and the nearer he came, the more obvious it was that he was running away from someone. A loud groaning and gurgling noise revealed the rotter that was chasing him, she had black liquid dripping from her mouth. She was out of control, and Yeosang held a terrifying look on his face as he came closer. 

“_Shit_!” San swore and ran towards Yeosang to help him, but Wooyoung held him back, on instinct.

Even if they had been drifting apart in the past few months, and even if Wooyoung was starting to realize just how much they had changed, how different San had become since the First Rising, how utterly unrecognizable Wooyoung had become. There was one loud thought crossing his mind in that moment, like an urgent alarm blaring that reminded him of one purpose only: he couldn’t lose San again. Admittedly, their reunion wasn’t ideal and it seemed they were only growing apart, but Wooyoung wasn’t ready to let go of San and his feelings for him, even if they were buried deep and barely saw the light of the day.

In that moment, when he feared he could lose San again, all he could think about was that he could not relive that loss again, forgetting that San was dead already and couldn’t really die again—unless someone shot his brain. The rotter that was chasing Yeosang couldn’t really harm San, but Wooyoung, in his panic, didn’t think of it. He didn’t—

All he could think about was the memory of the blood on his hands, three years ago, as he had kneeled down next to San’s cold body, the white bathroom tiles making his skin look even paler. All he could think about was that he couldn’t stand the idea of losing San again. 

But that was a mistake.

San gave him an alarmed and confused glance and ripped himself out of Wooyoung’s grip. San ran towards Yeosang and the rotter to help, but before he could arrive the rotter had tackled Yeosang onto the ground. Yeosang screamed, full of fear. Then there was the sound of a gun going off. San stopped running. 

Silence.

San screamed, kneeling next to the two bodies on the ground.

Wooyoung stared at the scene with wide eyes, unable to process what had just happened. Someone from the HVF came towards them, shouting at him and San, talking about something. Distressed voices and angry yelling, and screams all surrounded Wooyoung. He wasn’t sure if he made a sound himself or if he just stood there mutely.

“Come on,” said San at some point and dragged him away from the park, he was shaking and his voice was thin. 

Sirens approached, soon enough police cars and an ambulance whooshed past them.


	4. Charon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I know you,” he said, loudly, and Mingi opened his eyes.
> 
> Yeosang recognized him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeosang's POV and the rest of the boys are introduced !!
> 
> This is kind of from where I wanted to start the story initially, but then got lost in writing everything that happened prior lmao
> 
> Please enjoy!!

The Second Rising happened towards the end of July of 2018 and this time they were prepared. Everyone knew what to do. By September the first PDS sufferers were in their treated state and sent back to their homes. 

Kang Yeosang sat in the small car of his aunt Heejin, who told him about what he had missed since his death in April: how they had developed food specifically for PDS sufferers, and were working on making coffee and other drinks for the undead (the first test products already on the market at some coffee shops), she told him about how the HVF was disbanded by the government and any group of the sort completely prohibited—it was punishable now to be part of a group or create a group that was anti PDS sufferers. 

The medication had made immense advances, working better and for longer, and there were reports in other countries about undead regaining their sensory abilities again. In some crazier stories, there were even PDS sufferers that had apparently regained their heartbeat; Yeosang thought it was a hoax, but he didn’t tell Heejin as much, she seemed so excited. 

One thing Yeosang kept thinking about was seeing Wooyoung again. He wasn’t sure how his friend would react, if he’d even want to be friends with Yeosang still. He had accepted San—it had taken him a while to really feel comfortable—, but the difference was that San and Wooyoung had known one another for forever, whereas Yeosang had just been that scared and awkward boy Wooyoung had met during the First Rising. Now that he had San back he probably didn’t really need Yeosang anymore.

Yeosang wanted to believe that the bond they had formed during the aftermaths of the First Rising was strong enough to withstand death. Of course no one had really expected a Second Rising, there had been some religious people preaching about it and some of the more violent undead ones saying it was going to happen, but no one had _ actually _ believed there would be a Second Rising. 

But Yeosang had risen. 

He still remembered the feeling of disorientation and hunger and anger running through his body. A hunger he couldn’t name, not even now that he was in a treated state and had a clear mind. It was something unnameable and raw and terrifying. He hoped he’d never have to feel that again because that hunger had pushed him to hurt a human. He knew it hadn’t been his fault, he had been in an untreated state, but no matter how many times he had had to repeat that phrase in the faculty (_ what I did in my untreated state was not my fault, what I did in my untreated state does not define me _), it didn’t take away the haunting flashbacks he had of the moments he had spent roaming the streets as a monster. Or the way he had, together with other untreated PDS sufferers, tackled a human and killed them. Yeosang could see, when he closed his eyes to sleep, the way the human’s eyes became dead. The moment the life in them faded out.

It was haunting.

But what haunted Yeosang more in his sleep was the moment of his death. The gunshot echoed through his head and he’d wake up startled, remembering Wooyoung’s frightened expression as he stood in the distance, unmoving and watching how Yeosang died. It had been fucked up.

Yeosang wasn’t sure if it had been the rotter that had killed him or the HVF recruit that had shot him, maybe both. The pain of it was only a phantom now, he couldn’t actually feel it, but the memories of it were enough to have him twist and turn in the sheets of his uncomfortable bed in the facility. Even with the therapy he had gone to, those images came to him over and over again.

And he knew they’d stay with him for a while, like everything else since the First Rising, but just as he had started to overcome certain traumatic experiences and knew that he could heal, he knew that this was something that, with time, would one day be just another small scar he wore. 

Heejin drove the car up a small and short road, covered with white and gray polished pebbles, huge bushes on each side of the path, all of them blooming and clearly cut evenly. By the end of the road a huge house stretched out.

Once the car was parked in an empty spot, Heejin turned around to look at him. “I’m really sorry that it has to be like this,” she said, sorrowly.

“It’s okay,” Yeosang promised her with a weak smile.

The idea of living in a shared house together with other PDS sufferers was strange to Yeosang, but Heejin had moved after his death into an even smaller flat, and she couldn’t afford living somewhere bigger and Yeosang didn’t fit in her small flat. So Heejin had applied for a program the government had put out after the Second Rising, for those that couldn’t accommodate a PDS sufferer. Yeosang would be living together with strangers, help around the house, try to find a job, all with the help of social workers. A smoother way—compared to the time after the First Rising—to reintegrate the undead ones into society.

With a bone crushing hug and sad eyes, Heejin said her goodbyes and soon enough Yeosang stood alone in front of the main door of the big house, a duffel bag by his feet. With a resigned sigh he rang the doorbell, he heard it echo loud and shrill inside. He waited for approximately half a minute before someone finally opened the door.

It was a tall, young man, probably around Yeosang’s age, with his makeup hastily applied, wearing a pair of sunglasses. He smiled nervously and abashedly.

“Uh, sorry, we weren’t expecting you for another half an hour,” he said in place of a greeting. “But uh, welcome to the undead house!” he said, trying to seem cheerful.

Yeosang stared at him, scrunching up his nose in mild judgement.

“Hi,” he muttered.

The guy smiled at that, amused. 

“My name is Jeong Yunho, by the way,” he said and stretched out his hand to shake Yeosang’s, who noticed that Yunho was wearing plastic gloves. Yeosang shook it briefly, his own hand covered in makeup. “One of your future house mates!”

“Nice to meet you, Yunho-ssi, I’m Kang Yeosang.”

“I already knew that.” Yunho grinned and pointed at a whiteboard which had a schedule drawn on it, from Monday to Sunday, and there on the third day of the week it read KANG YEOSANG ARRIVAL! in big, bold letters. “And please, let’s drop the formalities… What year were you born?”

“Ninety-nine.”

Yunho smiled excitedly at that. “Me too!” he revealed. “Anyway, step inside.”

“Right,” he drawled out, looking around himself as he walked through the entrance door.

The house was old looking, with high ceilings and old wooden furniture that seemed to have undergone some restoration and shone in a very oily way. The hallway him and Yunho stood in was short and ended with a stairway leading upwards and another one leading downwards. To Yeosang’s right was a doorless frame that gave view to a relatively big kitchen, a counter in the middle of it, where a bowl of half eaten cereal stood. A boy was sitting on a stool and staring back at Yeosang, his hand holding a spoon. The boy had black hair, bowlcut, and a broad frame. He seemed short, shorter than Yeosang maybe even. He gave a quick, sweet smile before he continued to eat his cereal. Yeosang saw that it was one of the PDS sufferer friendly brands his aunt had talked to him about.

“That’s Choi Jongho, the youngest in the house,” Yunho introduced the boy. “He can be a bit rude at times, but is a sweetheart,” he promised, in a whisper, so that Jongho wouldn’t hear him. He lead Yeosang into the room opposite of the kitchen: a brightly lit living room. “So… This is where the magic happens,” he joked.

There was a big table with eight chairs, currently all empty. Towards the back of the room was a TV with a gaming console, a big couch forming an L around it. Next to the TV was a cupboard filled with different packages of the PDS medication, and several pamphlets about different topics concerning the undead. As Yeosang stepped into the room, he noticed a guitar and a keyboard standing right next to the door, and on the ground was a box with several mics.

“Ah, yes, we’re quite into music in this household,” Yunho explained, all while smiling. Yeosang wondered briefly if he always was this excited and happy, or if it was just a polite facade he put on. “Sometimes we hold dance parties with one of the social workers, you’ll meet him soon enough.” He laughed, eyes crinkling, as if he remembered something. “Are you into music, too?” he asked Yeosang.

“Yeah, I used to. Before, you know,” he moved his hand in the air to explain what he meant. Yunho nodded.

“Yeah, I understand.” He cleared his throat. “Uh, well, I’ll have to ask you to wait here for Seonghwa hyung to arrive. He’ll show you your room and explain you about the housing rules…” He told Yeosang, tone serious, but seconds later a dopey smile formed on his face. “I have to rush for an interview. I might get a job at the animal shelter down the road!” he exclaimed enthusiastically.

“Ah, thank you for showing me around and, you know. Yeah,” Yeosang stumbled over his words, awkwardness settling over him. “And good luck!” he said, hoping it didn’t come out too forced and bland.

Yunho smiled brightly. “Thank you, Yeosang!” And with that he left.

Yeosang walked over to one of the chairs and let himself fall down, sighing heavily. This was his new home, his new life. Before he could even fall into a spiral of thoughts, a young man entered the room. He was around Yeosang’s height with black hair parted by the side, pretty eyes that shone with warmth, his lips were plump and stretched out into a friendly smile once he saw Yeosang.

“Ah, you’re here already,” he said, surprised, and Yeosang noticed, as the other approached him, the name tag pinned to his purple sweatshirt; _ Park Seonghwa _. “Kang Yeosang, right?”

“Yes, I got out early…” he explained with a shrug.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t welcome you properly. I’m Park Seonghwa,” Seonghwa apologized and introduced himself, bowing his head. Yeosang bowed back. “I’ll assume you have met one of your future housemates then?”

“Yes, Yunho welcomed me. And I met Jongho, briefly.”

Seonghwa smiled delighted at that. 

“Excellent! You’ll be actually sharing a room with Jongho!” he informed Yeosang. 

“How many people are living here right now?” Yeosang asked.

“Not many. There’s Jeong Yunho, Choi Jongho, and Song Mingi, and well, now you living all on the first floor. I sleep in the basement, alone at the moment. They are renovating the second floor, though, so we can have more PDS sufferers living here soon!”

Four strangers. Yeosang had to live with four strangers. That scared and stressed him. But he tried to smile, nodding his head.

“That’s great.”

Seonghwa launched into an explanation about the house regulations: how they all contributed to keep it clean, how they’d learn to cook with PDS sufferer friendly products, and how they had to attend a weekly medical examination, getting their medication injected. How they’d receive help with finding a stable job and possibilities to perhaps study or join courses to gain higher education. It was a lot and at some point Yeosang spaced out, that was, until Seonghwa started to talk about bonding with the people they had known before their death, and Yeosang tuned in the moment he heard Wooyoung’s name fall from Seonghwa’s lips. 

He shuddered.

“What?” he asked, scratching his neck nervously. A habit he had before death and apparently still after.

“I was saying that we have these four people on your list of close acquaintances. Your aunt, Kang Heejin. And then your three friends, Choi San, Jeong Wooyoung, and uh, Kim Hongjoong. Is that correct?”

Yeosang swallowed. “Yes,” he said with a nod.

“We’re going to contact them soon, once you’ve settled in, as part of your program. Although, we haven’t found contact information on Choi San.”

“Ah, he moved in with some friends, but he never introduced them to us… At the time, um, we had just left the HVF and San is a PDS sufferer and… Everything was just awkward. We were trying to…” he trailed off, unsure where he was even trying to go with his explanation. “It’s okay if you don’t reach San, we weren’t really close anyway,” he ended up saying.

Seonghwa was silent for a moment, studying Yeosang’s face and expression. It was ridiculous really, that he had once been a proud HVF member and now there he was, a PDS sufferer… A cosmic joke to make Yeosang feel terrible about himself and all kinds of guilty and fucked up.

“All right.” Seonghwa nodded, momentarily his eyes had turned colder. “That makes sense.”

“Yeah, well…”

Seonghwa looked at him, then he sighed. “I understand that this is hard… Especially if you were part of the HVF, you must have some self loathing going on, but I promise that it helps facing familiars and old friends.”

“It’s just that… I can still remember how I was shot, you know? I dream about it every night, every night I hear the gunshot, and I see my-my friend’s face… It’s scarring. It changes you. Seeing someone die, and dying yourself… It all changes you,” he tried to explain what he was feeling, why he was feeling so scared to see Wooyoung again. 

It was something he struggled to put into words.

They had fought off rotters for a year, sticking together and helping one another with their nightmares, their pain. Wooyoung had been there when Yeosang had lost his family, he had helped him heal that wound. Yeosang had been there when they had found San and the moment San had gotten reintegrated into society. All those months Wooyoung had struggled accepting his old friend back in, Yeosang had been there to hear him rant and explain his fears and worries; he had heard the way Wooyoung thought of the PDS sufferers, how, even if San was his best friend since childhood, he couldn’t quite get over his disgust and hate. Yeosang and Wooyoung had been through hell and made it out, they had been on a path of healing and trying to forget the blood on their hands, trying to forget the amount of times they had seen someone’s light fade out from their eyes… 

They had tried their best to help heal one another when it came to the losses they had made.

Ever since that fateful September day two years ago, when the First Rising had happened, they had been together and dependant on one another, forming a bond that Yeosang had thought was thicker than anything else. The first rip in that bond had been San coming back, the second one had been Yeosang’s death.

The third rip would be Yeosang coming back.

Because as much as he thought he’d be the same, feel the same… As much as he hoped he could still be the same Kang Yeosang he once had been, he wasn’t. Wooyoung would notice that. Wooyoung himself probably wasn’t the same.

Nothing would ever be the same, and Yeosang was scared of that. He was on the other side of the river now and he had no idea how to build a bridge so he could still be friends with Wooyoung.

“I’m just scared,” he admitted to Seonghwa, who reached out a warm hand to pet his hair soothingly.

“It’s okay to be scared.”

“Everything is different now and I don’t—I can’t…”

“You will survive this too,” Seonghwa promised him. “You will wake up one day and realize that it’s over, and you won’t drown no longer.”

“When?”

Seonghwa shot him a pitiful look, biting his bottom lip.

“I don’t know when, but one day. I promise you that, Yeosang-ssi.”

Yeosang balled his hands into fists and let them rest on his lap. He wished he could cry, but his undead state had taken that away from him. He felt it, though, the sadness in his chest and mind and _ everywhere _. He felt it. Just as much as he felt the warmth radiating off of Seonghwa’s hand, which he knew he wasn’t supposed to. He didn’t say anything about it, though, he didn’t want to be sent back to the facility.

“Come on, I’ll show you your room, yeah?” Seonghwa offered with a reassuring smile. “Maybe Mingi’s done with his makeup and you can meet him!”

Yeosang swallowed, trying to find his voice again.

“All right,” he rasped out.

Yeosang took his duffle bag and followed Seonghwa upstairs, the steps creaked underneath their weight, as expected from the old house. When they reached the first floor Yeosang was taken aback by the naked walls, whereas the bottom floor was full of things, up here it seemed dead and unlived.

“Ah.” Seonghwa chuckled. “We’re still working on decorating the house, making it homely. For the longest time it was just Yunho and I living here…” he explained once he noticed Yeosang eyeing the white and empty walls that lined the hallway up there. Seonghwa stopped in front of one of the four doors up there, he opened. “This is Mingi and Yunho’s room.” Then he kept walking to the next on. “And this is Jongho’s and yours!” he exclaimed with a smile, looking excitedly at Yeosang.

It was relatively big, bigger than Yeosang had believed it would be. A bed at each side of the room, a big window opposite from where he stood that gave away the view onto a small road and a couple of houses on the other side. Jongho’s bed was neatly done, a book lying atop of it. A single poster of a band Yeosang didn’t know hung on the wall. Yeosang’s bed was empty and unmade but pillowcases and covers lied on top of it for him to use. A bag with hygienic products was there too.

“It’s kind of a welcoming bag?” Seonghwa explained, voice high pitched in discomfort. “I’ve told them again and again that makeup and contact lenses aren’t _ really _ a welcoming gift, but they don’t listen…” 

“It’s okay,” Yeosang told him. “This way I don’t have to worry about buying new ones for a while.” He attempted to smile in a reassuring way, but wasn’t sure if it really reached his eyes. Senghwa shot him a doubtful look.

“You can leave your bag and jacket here, and I’ll show you the bathroom and the Resting Room.”

Yeosang put the duffel bag onto his bed and took off the coat he was wearing, which wasn’t exactly necessary as he was dead, but for some reason chills ran through his body once he only stood there in a thin, white cotton shirt. He shuddered visibly. Seonghwa frowned, but didn’t say anything, just smiled politely and waited for him.

The two remaining doors were open, one was the bathroom, small but cozy, and the other was the so called Resting Room. There were mats on the floor and a cassette player that was currently playing soothing whale sounds—to Yeosang they sounded lonely and sad, and haunting. If his heart would still beat he knew it would squeeze right now in sadness. 

There was a boy in the resting room, sitting cross legged on one of the mats with his eyes closed. He seemed to be mediating. He had black hair and a big, pronounced nose. He appeared to be tall, going by his long legs tangled up.

“That’s Mingi. He’s a uni student,” Seonghwa whispered quietly and was about to lead Yeosang away so they could leave Mingi to meditate in peace, but Yeosang stopped to stare at the boy.

“I know you,” he said, loudly, and Mingi opened his eyes. He wasn’t wearing contact lenses and his white eyes with the broken pupil looked scary.

Even with the makeup applied and his black hair pushed away from his face, Yeosang recognized him. He had been there when Yeosang had attacked a human. Mingi had been one of the other rotters aiding him. Yeosang couldn’t believe it.

He felt pain in his chest, so much pain. He swore he could feel his heart stutter, but that was impossible. He let himself sink onto the floor, shaking violently as he stared at Mingi.

Mingi stared back at him, recognition slowly dawning on him.

“Oh, shit, it’s you,” he mumbled and untangled his legs to come forward towards Yeosang. “I-I,” he tried to say something but fell short, instead he just stared at Yeosang.

“I don’t understand…” Seonghwa said, crouching down to pat Yeosang’s back.

“We, um, we attacked a human together… In our untreated state,” Mingi explained, uncomfortable and with a hoarse voice.

“Oh.” Seonghwa bit his bottom lip worriedly, swallowing the knot in his throat. Even if he had done this for two years, it still was hard on most occasions. “Remember that it wasn’t your fault… What you did in your untreated state _ wasn’t _ you and—”

“But it was!” Yeosang lashed out, pushing Seonghwa away. “It was! It was me! I remember it. Every time I close my eyes I can see that. I remember, fiantly, that hunger, and the-the satisfaction of…” he broke off abruptly and curled up into a ball.

And much to Seonghwa’s astonishment, Yeosang started crying. Actual tears spilled out of his eyes. Mingi was just as perplexed, exchanging a wide eyed and wild look with Seonghwa, as Yeosang’s sobs tore through the big house.

Twenty minutes later Seonghwa, Mingi, and Yeosang sat in the kitchen, two cups of PDS sufferer friendly ‘hot’ chocolate standing, respectively, in front of the undead ones as Seonghwa nursed a steaming cup of tea. Jongho was leaning against the kitchen sink as he stared at Yeosang with badly hidden interest and fascination, he still hadn’t applied his makeup or put in his contact lenses.

“So,” Jongho started, licking his lips, “He cried? Like _ actual _ tears?”

Seonghwa nodded his head, clearly still shocked as he fell short on words to explain this situation or phenomenon properly. Yeosang had calmed down a bit, he wasn’t crying anymore and he wasn’t suffering at the hands of unwanted memories of his untreated state, but the words didn’t come to him easily. He wasn’t even sure what this was going to mean for him, for those around him.

“I admit, I’m a bit envious,” said Mingi, eyeing Yeosang with a mixture of the same curiosity as Jongho, and something colder. “This means you’re becoming human again, doesn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t say that…” Yeosang told him, finding his voice, but his throat was hoarse and scratchy, as if he had swallowed sand. “Maybe there’s something terribly wrong with me,” he countered and shot a glance at Seonghwa, who struggled to control his expression.

“I,” Seonghwa started, frowning. “I’ll have to look into it. I can’t say for sure what’s happening to you.” He gave Yeosang a tight lipped smile, nothing reassuring, but it didn’t seem as if he was scared of this development, just utterly clueless. “I’ve read news that in other countries this has been happening, so I’ll do my research. Do you want me to inform your facility, Yeosang-ssi?”

Yeosang was surprised by the question, he had supposed Seonghwa would take matters into his own hands and just report this incident to the doctors, but the fact that he was asking Yeosang for his permission did calm him down and made him trust the elder.

“Ah, I would appreciate it if you did not… If that’s okay?” he wondered, hopeful. Seonghwa nodded his head, aiming for a warm smile.

“I won’t, if that’s what you want. If it gets worse, though… If there are symptoms or, er, just _ anything _ that seems off, tell me right away, please,” Seonghwa asked of him.

“I will,” he promised with a nod.

“That goes for you two as well,” Seonghwa said, addressing the other two PDS sufferers in the room.

“Yes, hyung!” Mingi said, way too loudly, whereas Jongho just nodded his head.

A rather pregnant silence settled over the four of them, the heaviness and importance of the secret that had bonded them that morning slowly making its way into their minds, as they understood what this could possibly mean. Yeosang wasn’t going to lie and say that it didn’t worry him because it did, a great amount to be true, but he had learned to deal with things quietly and fall under the radar. In the faculty he had followed all rules, tried his best like all the other PDS sufferers to undergo treatment and be reintegrated into society. His worries about being back here and built himself a life were enough. He didn’t need _ this _ to be added on top of his long list—this worry about changing and evolving into… What? What was he going through? He knew he wasn’t the only one, as Seonghwa had said there were stories in other countries about this and other anomalies happening to PDS sufferers; but what did it mean for Yeosang? Why him? Why was he different?

“Ah, shoot, I’ve gotta go!” Mingi suddenly exclaimed, an alarmed look on his face as he checked the kitchen clock. “I’ve got to get my student ID done and a couple of other things!” With that he left the kitchen in a sprint.

“I should probably get ready as well…” Jongho mumbled, scratching his bare face, a look of mild annoyance crossing his face.

“Jongho, we talked about it,” Seonghwa said warningly.

“I know, hyung. And I’m doing it, aren’t I?” Jongho shot back and left the kitchen, quickly, without giving Seonghwa a chance to say something to him.

Seonghwa sighed. “What a day,” he mumbled to himself, smiling pitifully. “Come on, let me show you our garden and tell you about our activities,” he said after a brief pause, his warm and welcoming smile back, but his eyes were more tired than before. Yeosang wondered how much he’d seen.

“Sure,” Yeosang agreed, not wanting to add on to Seonghwa’s already stressed state.

He followed the older out of the house, feeling the cold hit him harshly, and he wished he could really be just undead, with no feelings whatsoever; _ that would be so much better, _ he thought resigned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated !!


	5. 10am Gare Du Nord

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mingi seemed to realize what was happening. “Shit, you know each other?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _10am gare du nord_ has one of my favorite song lines ever: _Please do not break my heart,_  
_I think it's had enough pain to last the rest of my life_,,,, el em a oh, time to CryTM
> 
> ANYWAY, enjoy!

The university campus was scary. The students walking around in groups, talking excitedly about the upcoming year. Wooyoung felt detached from it all. Over the summer he had taken exams to get his high school degree and then the university entrance exams, which had been a month into the new semester already, so he was starting later than everyone else. Which meant he was left behind.

He wished Hongjoong would have taken his entrance exams, but his friend had dipped out and instead kept working his old job at the music shop near campus, which had its perks as it meant Wooyoung could visit him after classes were over. Or they could meet over lunch time in one of the coffee shops nearby. It didn’t change the fact, though, that Wooyoung walked alone into the mostly filled classroom that October morning.

There were some hushed whispers, but mostly people didn’t care about him. That was until someone pointed at him, a boy with dyed blonde hair and piercings. 

He sneered. “Hey, weren’t you part of the HVF?”

Wooyoung hated it. After the First Rising the HVF had protected them all, made sure everyone was safe from rotters, even while the military believed the zones were safe. The HVF kept patrolling. There had been a lot of losses, a lot of brave souls that had left earth so that people could live on. But now that the PDS sufferers were part of society and it had become sort of illegal killing them, everyone had turned their backs on the HVF, not remembering the sacrifice they had offered after the First Rising.

Wooyoung kept his eyes low.

Although he had been part of the HVF and had been proud of it, after the incident in April, he realized that the remnants of the group had become terrible people that just shot because it brought them a feeling of power. A _ thrill _. He didn’t associate himself with those, but he still believed that during the time he had been in the HVF it had served a valiant and noble purpose.

He sat down by the back of the classroom, quietly, looking down at the table.

He wished Yeosang could be there. Or San.

But after the terrible accident in April, San had distanced himself from Wooyoung even more than he already had, hanging out more and more with only PDS sufferers. Going to parties and underground clubs that were specifically for the undead. San had started to walk around without his makeup, without his contact lenses, proudly showing off the fact he was undead. _ Undead and proud _. Wooyoung thought it was provocative, considering there had been a Second Rising during the summer. Thankfully there hadn’t been as many deaths as during the First Rising, but there had been a considerably big amount of victims—from both sides. 

So Wooyoung had stopped hanging out with San. He missed his friend, but right now wasn’t a good time for them to hang out.

And Yeosang, for all Wooyoung knew, could be dead. The day he had heard of the Second Rising, he had gone to his friend’s grave with his heart beating so fast he had thought it would jump out of his chest. Wooyoung found Yeosang’s grave torn open. The sight had given him two reactions: the immediate one, mild disgust at the sight of it; the other one had been hope. 

The hope still persisted, even if Wooyoung knew that, technically, Yeosang could’ve been killed during the Second Rising. There wasn’t much he could do to find out, so right now all he could possibly do was _ wait_.

And waiting was the worst.

“Excuse me?” came a deep voice from next to Wooyoung. He turned around and came face to face with a boy his age, taller than him, with dark hair pushed away from his forehead. His face was full of thick makeup, it was noticeable. “Is this seat taken?” the boy asked, pointing at the seat next to Wooyoung.

“Uh, no—” he started to answer.

“Careful with that one, Mingi,” said the same boy with the bleached hair, interrupting Wooyoung. “He was in the HVF!” he said warningly, giving Wooyoung a deprecative look.

“Oh,” the tall boy—Mingi—said and looked down at Wooyoung. He searched his face for a very long time and then he just sat down. “You’ve killed someone like me?” he asked bluntly.

Wooyoung coughed uncomfortably, but nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“Well, I’ve killed a human, so…” He shrugged, as if it settled the matter. And apparently it did for the boy because next thing was his smile directed at Wooyoung. “I’m Song Mingi, by the way. Started just two weeks prior, after I was released early from the facility!” The way he said it, with his chest puffed out, all proud, made Wooyoung’s lips form the ghost of a smile.

“I was admitted last week, but too busy to come until now,” Wooyoung answered lamely. Mingi nodded, interested. “Um, yeah… So, you were uh, part of the Second Rising?” he asked, stupidly, and watched mortified the way Mingi’s smile disappeared. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have asked!”

“It’s fine, I guess,” Mingi replied. “Yeah. Second Rising. I died during the first one.”

“Ah…” Wooyoung didn’t ask how, he had an inkling on how it might have happened.

Mingi gave him a look, suddenly curious. “Have you lost anyone in the risings?”

Wooyoung clenched his jaw, exhaling slowly. “Yes. He-he was shot.”

Mingi frowned, confused. “Oh, you lost someone like me?” he inquired, cocking his head. “I thought you were in the HVF, isn’t that a bit contradictory?”

Wooyoung swallowed, trying to control his emotions. “No.”

“No, what?” 

Wooyoung learnt that Mingi was noisy, and he didn’t seem to realize himself.

“No, I didn’t lose someone like you. My friend was alive and he got shot by someone from the HVF,” he explained. Mingi gasped at that, surprised. “And no, it isn’t contradictory. When I was in the HVF we didn’t just-just kill PDS sufferers… We protected those that were alive; how were we supposed to know that there would be a cure?” he defended himself.

“Okay, fair,” Mingi said after a moment of thinking about it. “Are you friends with someone like me?”

“Kind of. My best friend from childhood is a PDS sufferer, but recently he’s been… I don’t know. I guess discovering himself in his new identity?” Wooyoung tried, shrugging.

“Ah, gotcha. One of my roomies is a bit rebellious and wants to stop wearing the makeup and contact lenses.”

“Oh, you live on your own?” Wooyoung asked curiously. Usually they didn’t rent places to PDS sufferers, it was still getting worked over in the laws. There was a lot of catching up to be done.

“Kind of. I live in a house together with two, wait not, three other PDS sufferers and Seonghwa hyung,” Mingi answered, pulling out his notebook and a pen as the professor finally walked into the classroom, five minutes too late.

“And ‘Seonghwa hyung’?” Wooyoung repeated. “What does that mean?”

“He’s a social worker.”

Wooyoung hummed in understanding. 

Mingi lived in one of the housing systems for PDS sufferers; they had become a common thing this year, ever more so after the Second Rising. Wooyoung thought it was a nice solution to those that rose without any family or friends to take them in—whether they didn’t want to take in a PDS sufferer or they were dead themselves and hadn’t risen.

They fell silent as the professor started the class.

That afternoon, when Wooyoung came home to his and Hongjoong’s shared flat in the city center, he was tired and worn out from the day. He just wanted to crash onto his bed, maybe call his mom to tell her that his first day had gone well, and inform her that he liked his flat and independency. 

After the First Rising, his relationship with his remaining family had become weird and straining. His mother had been hysterical for a year, staying in a mental institution, whereas his older brother had joined the military to fight. At some point his mom’s mental health had become better, but she wasn’t equipped to be living alone so she lived in a house together with other patients and nurses. Wooyoung’s brother still worked at the military, had become a high ranked captain, earned well, which meant Wooyoung could live independently, without having to worry constantly. 

He wasn’t in the HVF anymore, there was no danger anymore regarding the PDS sufferers’ situation, and his brother had paid for most of his university costs. Wooyoung could live a _ normal _ life now. The idea still felt strange to him.

He disposed his bag and jacket onto the floor next to his bed, but before he could nest himself comfortably in his blanket, his phone rang. He thought it might have been Hongjoong calling to ask if Wooyoung wanted take out food so he picked up without checking the ID.

He was surprised when the voice of a stranger greeted him.

“Am I speaking to Jeong Wooyoung?”

“Yes.” The scene was so familiar it hurt Wooyoung. His heart was racing and he was too scared to hope this was the call he had been waiting for. He wanted to see Yeosang again, but at the same time he wasn’t sure how he’d stomach that same kind of situation _ again _. Seeing his best friend after seeing his corpse, attending his funeral… 

It was as if he was reliving the whole San thing again; sure, it was different.

For starters, Yeosang had been shot and Wooyoung hadn’t been crushing on Yeosang. There had been rumors about a Second Rising, so Wooyoung had known that there was a high chance for him to see Yeosang again. Of course that hadn’t made the pain and grief less, but many things about Yeosang’s death had been and felt different to San’s death three years ago.

“My name is Park Seonghwa,” the young man introduced himself. Seonghwa, he had heard that name before; could it be a coincidence? “I am calling you from the PDS Sufferers’ Housing System,” he explained. Wooyoung swallowed thickly, then he let out a stuttering breath.

“O-okay?”

“I am calling on behalf of Kang Yeosang. He’s going to be joining us tomorrow, it is part of his reintegration into society to meet the closest people to him from before his death. You were one of his close friends, am I correct?”

Wooyoung tried to find his voice. _ Yeosang is alive _, he kept thinking.

“That’s correct,” he answered, barely keeping his tears at bay. He could cry once he hung up, once Hongjoong was home and they could cuddle.

“Is it correct that you live with Kim Hongjoong? Who was Yeosang’s friend as well?” Senghwa kept interrogating.

“Yeah.”

“All right.” There was scribbling noise coming from the other side of the phone. “Lastly, will you two be available to meet Kang Yeosang in the future? It is understandable if this is too traumatizing for you—”

“I-I will… I will be available,” he said, interrupting Seonghwa. The words had escaped his lips before he could even think about what he was saying. “I’m not so sure about Hongjoong hyung, though. You’ll have to call him separately or, I can ask him and tell him to call you back?” he rambled, voice shaking a bit with emotion.

There was a short, weird silence. “If it’s no trouble, please tell him to call me back, that would be great. Thank you, Wooyoung-ssi.”

Wooyoung swallowed.

“I-I just want to say that, even if I agree, I might change my mind in my future and I hope that is okay. I need to have this freedom,” he told Seonghwa.

There was another short silence, tense.

“I suppose that would be okay…” he finally said, although it was clear he wasn’t exactly happy about Wooyoung’s decision. “Lastly, I want to ask about another one of your friends. He isn’t registered anywhere, but it says here that he moved in with you last year after the first release of PDS sufferers. Choi San?”

Wooyoung exhaled. He regretted taking this call.

“He… He lives with some undead friends somewhere now. I don’t know where exactly. Sorry. I can give you his old phone number, though I don’t know if he still uses that one.”

“That would be very helpful, thank you.”

After Wooyoung gave Seonghwa San’s digits they bid their goodbyes and he hung up. Wooyoung let himself fall onto his bed, dragging his blanket up to his chin, and curled up into a ball and started shaking. The tears didn’t come, it was more like a phantom cry. 

Yeosang was alive, he was back, and Wooyoung would get to see him. It felt surreal, and his heart beat naseousatingly fast in his chest. It was overwhelming. He wanted to see Yeosang again so badly, of course, before he had already thought about it and yearned for it, but in that moment, after receiving the confirmation that he would see Yeosang again if he desired so… What Wooyoung felt was inexplicable and strong, and terrifying. He had been foolish to believe his feelings for Yeosang had been strictly platonic these past two years, it was so much more. So much he couldn’t put it into words, not because it was difficult for him to describe it, but rather because there were no words to measure the love he felt.

At some point Wooyoung must have fallen asleep because he was woken up when Hongjoong came home, two hours later.

Hongjoong walked straight into Wooyoung’s room, from his wrist dangled a plastic bag with some kind of food, a waft of spices made its way over to Wooyoung and he stuck his head out from under the blanket with wide, hungry eyes.

“Hyung?”

“What happened?” Hongjoong asked, concerned. He sat down on Wooyoung’s bed, kicking off his shoes, and then opened the bag.

“Yeosang is back. They want us to go and talk with him…”

Hongjoong nodded his head, sighing. “Ah.”

“I agreed. Kind of,” he said, peeking inside the bag to see what Hongjoong had bought. “Half agreed,” he corrected.

“That will be rough.” Hongjoong didn’t seem as rattled as Wooyoung would have believed. Then again he hadn’t gone through what Wooyoung had with San, he didn’t know how it was. And he hadn’t known Yeosang as much as Wooyoung had.

“You still have to call the guy and deny or agree.”

“I’ll do that soon, just text me the number.” Wooyoung nodded. “I bought [korean meal], some fried chicken. A couple of packs of spicy noodles, much against my better judgement.” He scrunched up his nose. “Which one do you want to eat?”

Wooyoung made an embarrassing noise. “All of it?” he squeaked.

Hongjoong laughed, but nodded his head. 

“Come to the living room. We can watch something and get your mind off of things, yeah?”

“Thank you, hyung.”

In the end it all happened through pure coincidence.

It was November already, the weather considerably colder, and the rain falling heavily on most days. Wooyoung liked that weather, plus it was the month his birthday fell in, so that was always a nice touch. He hadn’t really gotten to celebrate it in two years, but this time around it seemed that things were settled enough for him to actually plan something out. Even if it would just be a nice launch date with his brother and mother over at the house she lived in, and afterwards watch a movie with Hongjoong. In the past San would’ve joined, showering Wooyoung with love and bringing him some incredibly thoughtful present.

But that was in the past.

The previous two years, Wooyoung had celebrated by looking up at the sky and hoping that he’d survive until the next one, and Yeosang would give him a quietly mumbled _ happy birthday _, his deep voice breaking the silence around them. Wooyoung would nod in appreciation, and Yeosang would search his hand in the darkness to give him a squeeze of encouragement. And that had been it.

(Wooyoung wondered if this year Yeosang would be part of his birthday or not.)

Classes had become easier to sit through, mostly thanks to Mingi’s bright and chaotic energy. He was constantly so motivated and happy to just be there, partake in life, which made Wooyoung think about how he’d feel after given a second chance at life. Probably the same. He’d take things less serious and would be bolder. He wondered why he wasn’t now, considering how brief life could be. How quick it could end.

“Wooyoung!” called out Mingi, sitting down next to him as the professor walked in. “You gotta come over today. I’ve got this really cool video game and extra with it came a dancing game!” he said delighted, as if it was the sweetest deal he ever had made.

“Ah, but don’t you live with um, other people? Won’t I be a bother?” Wooyoung asked; he knew up to an 80% chance that Yeosang was one of Mingi’s roommates. From the way he talked about them, the new one in particular, and the fact that Park Seonghwa, the social worker, was the same. 

“Ah no, Yunho’s working today. The other two are outside training for interviews and taking online courses to figure out what to do with life,” Mingi answered. “Seonghwa hyung is doing paperwork and whatnot over at his office, and even if he was home he would _ love _ to play the dancing game. I just know it!”

Wooyoung thought it over. 

“I guess there’s no harm if I come over for a while,” he finally settled on saying. Mingi gave him the biggest smile. 

“Yes!” He punched the air with his fist in victory.

“Song Mingi,” said the professor warningly.

“I apologize.” He looked apologetically into the classroom, smiling abashedly.

Someone snickered.

Wooyoung couldn’t help the small smile that spread across his face, he really had come to like Mingi’s company. Most of the time he even forgot he was a PDS sufferer and that once he had fought them off. 

The past felt further and further away these days.

Which is why, of course, one hour into playing some puzzle solving fantasy game on the gaming console with Mingi, snacks laid out in front of them, that the front door opened and someone walked in. Wooyoung and Mingi kept playing, but the latter called out a loud _ hello _.

“Seonghwa hyung, is that you?” Mingi asked, focused on the screen of the TV.

“No, it’s me,” said a deep voice back.

Wooyoung dropped the controller and stared blankly at the screen, flushing in panic. Sweat was forming on his lower back, and his skin prickled.

“Hey, what the _ fuck _,” Mingi protested. “Come on, Wooyoung, we were winning that round!”

Wooyoung swallowed.

“S-sorry,” he mumbled out, begging for Yeosang to not walk into the living room.

But Yeosang did, dressed in an oversized winter coat, some black skinny jeans, and a light blue beanie pulled over his dark brown hair. He held a pack of PDS sufferer friendly brownies and a question on the tip of his tongue.

“Mingi-ssi, do you—” It died the moment Yeosang’s eyes met Wooyoung’s. He didn’t drop the brownies, but he didn’t move any further either, like a stature he stood in the door frame and just stared at his old friend. “Oh.”

Mingi seemed to realize what was happening. “Shit, you know each other?” He didn’t wait for an answer and just shot up, pausing the game before lying the controller on top of the TV. “Do I call Seonghwa hyung?” he asked into the room, looking in between Yeosang and Wooyoung. “Um, guys, hello?”

Yeosang blinked, and then moved. He walked into the living room, handing the brownies to Mingi, and finally stopped in front of Wooyoung, who was still on the floor, bent in an awkward angle so he could look up at Yeosang.

“Wooyoung,” he said softly and quietly, a bit raspy.

And Wooyoung decided to stand up, slowly, nearly losing his balance.

“Yeosang.”

Mingi mumbled something under his breath that neither of the boys caught.

After a quiet, drawn out stare down, they moved, at the same time, and hugged one another. It came natural, as if their bodies knew how to move when they were around one another. That immediate need to comfort the other, to check if they were unscathed, it seemed an automatic reaction by now. Wooyoung’s arms fit perfectly around Yeosang’s shoulders, it was a place they knew by memory, and vice versa. They clung to each other as if their lives depended on it. Wooyoung felt something in his heart quieten down, some of that sorrow and anger, and tumult suddenly became a background noise. He felt himself breathe in deeply and exhaled shakily, the air so much cleaner and palpable, the familiar scent of Yeosang part of it all. 

And he knew then _ this _ meant something bigger.

For Yeosang it was relieving to understand that Wooyoung still cared for him and wanted him in his life. It calmed his shaking heart, and the agony he had been in ever since he thought about how his reunion with Wooyoung would go, slowly began to settle until it was nearly all gone. For a wild second, Yeosang thought, _ I am in love with him _ , instead of the usual and faint _ I love him _ that crossed his mind whenever they had made it through a particular hard situation. 

Yeosang bit his lip and finally pulled back, suddenly aware of how long this hug was lasting. He felt weirdly ashamed, his fingertips tingling, his ears burning, his heart… His heart beating softly, nearly not noticeable, but he noticed because he had felt it dead for months. He didn’t want to think about what it meant, he didn’t want to acknowledge it, too scared of the meaning behind it.

Wooyoung had tears in his eyes when they drew apart, and Yeosang passed a shaking hand over the other’s eyes to remove them, smiling hesitantly, still waiting for Wooyoung.

“I’ve missed you,” said the younger of the two.

Yeosang now allowed himself to grin. 

“I’ve missed you too.”

“Wait so,” Mingi interjected, confused and a bit emotional over the reunion, “how do you two know each other?” he asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

“We were classmates in high school and then the First Rising happened, and, you know,” Wooyoung explained lazily.

“Yeah, and then we were in the HVF for a while,” Yeosang added, grimacing. “And, well, then I got shot and died in April… But here I am.” He did a stupid, small twirl, still caught up in the overwhelming relief.

“Yeah,” Wooyoung said quietly, more to himself, and looked at Yeosang with a soft look in his eyes. “Here you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is long due, but thank you so much to everyone reading this!! I didn't think anyone would read it djksds so I really appreciate it and I really appreciate the comments and kudos, thank you, I love you!💛💛💛💛💛


	6. Don't Swim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m still me,” Yeosang promised. “Sure, I will have changed, it’s inevitable. But you… You still mean the same to me, Wooyoung. That won’t ever change.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So for December there won't be many updates on this fic as it is a pretty hectic month for me, and I'm going to be posting my Yunho & Hongjoong fic: [raining over lovers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21332173/chapters/50805343). 
> 
> Plus, as of recently I was writing the outline & first chapters for a uh...... pretty long ATEEZ Harry Potter AU :~) (Slow Burn, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, and all that lovely jazz!) Not sure when _exactly_ that's gonna come but yeah!

Yeosang never was particularly good at handling surprises. He was quiet by nature, liked his things organized and in control. He liked his life rather plain and easy, nothing to distract him from what was right in front of him, nothing too altering of how he had set out the course. It had always worked like that until the day it hadn’t anymore, the turning point in Yeosang’s life.

The day of the First Rising, Yeosang had sat in detention, together with Wooyoung—at the time they had been mere acquaintances. The reason for Yeosang’s detention had been a certain disturbance in his routine. 

For the longest time, Yeosang simply had focused on his school work and ignored anything else, such as _ romance _, and it had worked until the day Choi Yeonjun, his classmate, had confessed to him while they had been sitting in the library and doing their homework. Only the sound of rustling book pages being turned over and pens scribbling on paper around them. 

Yeosang always had liked the library because of that: the expected calm quietness. 

But the moment those words had left Yeonjun’s mouth, he had felt that important pillar fall away. The library had been just as quiet after those words, but inside Yeosang’s mind a storm had come alive, destroying whatever lay in its way. He remembered how he had stumbled out of the library after the confession, forgetting all of his belongings inside. Yeonjun had followed him with a panicked and worried voice.

Yeosang had kept things such as romance at bay for a reason. He had known he wasn’t like most of his fellow male classmate, that fancied girls. He was different in that compartment, but he never had dared to explore it because attached with it came a lot of troublesome consequences. He had feared the bullying that may follow, the exclusion, the lifelong chasing… Yeosang was already labeled the quiet and weird kid, he couldn’t deal becoming the target of homophobia, too.

When Yeonjun had tried to talk to him—scared out of his mind, but so, so brave—, Yeosang had pushed him away harshly. It was his misfortune that a teacher had caught him doing this, sending him immediately to detention. Yeonjun had been send home as he had been crying intensely.

The First Rising had happened when Yeosang was seventeen, in the middle of puberty and figuring himself out, and the whole undead people walking around, threateningly, had put a stop to his journey of self discovery. Now though—after having gone through death and then the untreated state—everything was different for him. He had time to heal, to figure himself out, to understand and put a name to some of these things he was feeling. That he had been feeling in the past, too, but never gotten a chance to unravel.

For Yeosang it was something new having heart to heart conversations, but thanks to the therapy he did together with Seonghwa and a professional, it had become easier to articulate what he felt and give his emotions names and meaning. Give them life and let them roam freely. Another new thing for Yeosang were some of these feelings he was experiencing.

In the past (almost) two months, Yeosang had had a lot of eye opening and personal conversations with his therapist and some others with Seonghwa. One of them revolving around his sexuality, how he had known already as a young teenager to be gay, but always too scared to dwelve into it. To discover further, and the past two years hadn’t really given him much time to think about it. Seonghwa had hugged him and told him it was okay, that he could talk about it as much as he needed since Seonghwa himself was bisexual and would try to help where he could.

That conversation had lifted a huge weight off of his shoulders.

Sitting across from Wooyoung, though, it was as if he had learnt nothing; searching for the right words, too scared to say something he shouldn’t. Scared of ruining this all. 

It was about half an hour after the reunion, and Yeosang and Wooyoung sat at the big table in the living room, waiting for Mingi to join them, who was preparing them all hot chocolates. 

An awkward tense had spread over them, after the emotional reunion there were many words they wanted to speak out loud but were holding back. There was so much Yeosang suddenly felt the need to confess towards Wooyoung, words that had gotten lost in the urgency and danger they both had gotten so used to live with. That kind of survival oriented life had kept them both from spilling out their hearts, but now they both could slow down and actually think about life and their surroundings; and their _feelings_. 

“All right, all done,” Mingi announced and came back to rejoin them, handing them all their drinks, the PDS sufferers’ cocoa was a bit darker than Wooyoung’s. 

When Yeosang tried to take a sip he felt his tongue burn, which wasn’t really supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to _feel_ it, so he swallowed it and ignored the pain. Mingi already knew some of his unusual behaviors, but Wooyoung didn’t, and Yeosang didn’t want to freak out his old friend. They had just reunited.

“Thanks, Mingi,” Wooyoung said with a smile, it was soft and warm, a bit hesitant with what had just happened.

Yeosang was suddenly overly aware of the fact that Wooyoung was _ very _ handsome.

The black hair, parted in the middle, his strong nose and tanned skin. He wasn’t tall, in fact a bit smaller than Yeosang, but it didn’t really matter. He was graceful and a lot more soft spoken than Yeosang remembered from their high school days, from their HVF days… He had missed him terribly.

“So, you’re attending university?” Yeosang asked, searching for a way to build up a conversation with Wooyoung, to find back to their old ways even if everything was entirely new.

“Yes.” Wooyoung nodded. “Not sure what I’ll be doing with the degree, but I’m doing something, so that’s nice,” he explained with a shrug. “What about you? What are your plans?”

Yeosang looked down. “I’m not sure, yet,” he said honestly. “For now adapt, find a job…”

Woyoung nodded interested, his eyes never leaving Yeosang, which was unnerving as much as it was making Yeosang feel blessed.

“You can always apply for the spring semester,” Mingi butted in.

Yeosang shrugged. “Maybe.”

Yeosang liked Mingi, really he did, but in that moment he sort of wished for his long friend to take the cue and leave them alone—even if the prospect of being alone with Wooyoung was mildly terrifying. Wooyoung was finishing up his cup of hot chocolate, glancing at Yeosang briefly, a faint smile on his face as their eyes met, his lips were trembling as if he wanted to break out into a much bigger smile, or perhaps it was forced. Yeosang wasn’t sure. He really, _desperately_, hoped Wooyoung wasn’t faking his smiles; wasn’t faking his happiness upon seeing Yeosang again.

Mingi stood up suddenly, his chair scraping on the ground. It startled Yeosang, who had been just staring at his old friend. “I’m going to check up on Jongho, he should’ve been back already.” With that he left the living room, leaving them alone.

“So,” Wooyoung said after a short silence, “my birthday is soon.” Yeosang hummed at that, expectantly looking him. “I’m not sure how I will celebrate it, but would you be interested in coming?”

Yeosang nodded his head, overly excited and probably really desperate. Wooyoung didn’t seem to notice, though, he only let out a delightful laugh.

“Great!” He was reaching out his hand towards Yeosang, but stopped, letting it hang midair, and retrieved it again, coughing awkwardly. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“For what?”

“I keep thinking that-that it’s the same, but it’s not.” Yeosang frowned at that, cocking his head. “I don’t really know how to act because even if it’s you, it’s not, at the same time. I don’t know what you’re comfortable with,” he explained himself. “San was very different when he came back—very _changed_. I just don’t know where to stand with you…” He sounded sad and frustrated, unable to properly express his feelings. Yeosang had noticed that whenever something was _ really _ important to Wooyoung he struggled to express it.

Yeosang reached out his own hand and let it lay atop Wooyoung’s, he squeezed it briefly. “I’m still me,” he promised. Wooyoung looked at him, warily, and searched his face. “Sure, I will have changed, it’s inevitable. But you… You still mean the same to me, Wooyoung. That won’t ever change.”

“Do you really mean that?” Wooyoung asked, the doubtfulness in his voice pained Yeosang.

“Death won’t take away my love for you,” he blurted out, foolishly. 

He felt Wooyoung’s hand twitch underneath his, and he was glad, for once, that he was a PDS sufferer, because he knew that were he not, his ears would be red. His cheeks would be tainted in the brightest shade of red. He hadn’t meant for it to come out sounding like a declaration of love, but as he thought over these words, he realized just how true they were. This revelation that he deeply loved Wooyoung made him feel exposed and vulnerable, and he wished to do nothing more than hide himself away; but Wooyoung was sitting in front of him and staring at him with an unreadable expression on his face.

Yeosang cleared his throat, maintaining his eye contact and leaving his hand where it still rested atop Wooyoung’s. He swallowed down that fear of rejection and the thought of being too exposed.

He smiled. “We’ll always be friends, don’t you agree?” he asked, trying to salvage himself and the situation.

Wooyoung blinked at him, his mouth twitched, and then he nodded, slowly. “Yes, I agree. Death didn’t take away my love for you, either.”

Even if Wooyoung meant those words in the platonic way—which in no way had to be less meaningful than romantic love—it still felt as though someone was reaching inside Yeosang’s chest and tearing his heart out.

_ Fuck _ , he wondered, _ am I in love with Wooyoung? _

The question shouldn’t have been that much of a startlement, after all traces of it had always been there, lingering in the back of Yeosang’s mind; but still, it surprised him. 

He looked at Wooyoung, silence around them, and Wooyoung looked back, something magnetic about his gaze. The thought that he wanted to kiss him crossed Yeosang’s head and he let his eyes flicker downward, to his friend’s lips, which were parted, and he could feel _ something_ flutter lightlyin his chest. Yeosang swallowed the knot in his throat, looking up at Wooyoung again. To his surprise, Wooyoung’s cheeks were faintly pink, and with horror Yeosang wondered if he had caught him staring at his lips. 

He laughed awkwardly. “Do you… Do you want to, er, get more hot chocolate?” he offered.

“S-sure!” Wooyoung nodded his head eagerly, he removed his hand from underneath Yeosang’s, and stood up abruptly. “Let’s go!”

Mingi stood in the kitchen, phone in hand as he seemed to text someone. He looked up when they entered, smiling at them. “Jongho is going to be here very soon. He’s bringing PDS sufferer friendly popcorn. It’s new on the market!” he told them, excitedly. “Will you be staying for dinner, Wooyoung-ssi?”

“Ah…” He looked at Yeosang, as if to ask for permission. “Wouldn’t it be troublesome?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Yeosang promised him.

Wooyoung smiled brightly at him. “Then I’ll stay!”

“Nice!” Mingi gave him a thumbs up. “I’ll text Seonghwa hyung that we have a guest. He’s going to be super excited!”

The front door opened and in came Jongho, tired looking. He disposed of his coat by the door, kicked off his shoes, and wandered into the kitchen. He stopped when he spotted Wooyoung, then his eyes flitted over to Yeosang, who was standing in a comfortable closeness to their guest, and his mouth parted in surprise and acknowledgment.

Yeosang had told Jongho about Wooyoung. The two of them being roommates had sort of made them bond with the darkness of the night around them and the need to have someone to confess their secrets to—someone who wasn’t a professional or Seonghwa. A friend, of sorts. Yeosang had told Jongho about Wooyoung, his friend from the First Rising, that he was very fond of, and undoubtedly Jongho had caught on to that fondness, had realized there was a whole lot more to it than just friendship. In exchange, Jongho had confessed to Yeosang that he didn’t want to hide his true self from the world, that he didn’t want to feel ashamed of his undeadness, and that he was seeking out PDS sufferer groups that encouraged them to walk barefaced and without contact lenses. 

A heavy secret for a heavy secret.

Jongho’s eyes zeroed in on Yeosang, the question dancing in his eyes; _ is this who you have been talking about? _And Yeosang nodded nearly imperceptible, enough for Jongho to know and to understand.

“Hi, I’m Choi Jongho, nice to meet you!” he introduced himself to Wooyoung, reaching out his hand. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

Wooyoung took his hand. “No, we haven’t. I’m Jeong Wooyoung. And likewise.”

The group settled into a comfortable conversation of their respective days, about their classes, about PDS sufferer food and if it really was any good. They made Wooyoung try some of the popcorn Jongho had bought, his face scrunched up in disgust, to which the undead ones laughed. 

“It’s not bad, per se, it’s just… _not_ popcorn,” Wooyoung explained, grabbing another piece to get the taste right.

“I don’t think you should take another one,” Jongho said, eyeing the cardbox of the product, reading up on what was in there. “You wouldn’t like if I read the ingredients out loud.”

Wooyoung pulled a face. “Thanks for warning me, Jongho-ssi.” 

The younger shrugged, a grin on his face. He looked at Yeosang, a look dancing in his eyes, as if to say that he approved of Wooyoung. Yeosang felt himself smile proudly, and a bit abashed at the same time. 

“Seonghwa hyung should be here in about half an hour,” Mingi announced. “Let’s set up the table.” Before they could move, though, the doorbell rang. Mingi exchanged a questioning look with Yeosang and Jongho. “Did any of you invite someone else?” he wondered.

“No,” Jongho answered, then looked at Yeosang. “You, hyung?”

Yeosang shook his head. “I’ll get it, though,” he told them and walked towards the door.

“Maybe it’s just Yunho and he’s forgotten his keys,” Mingi contemplated as he pulled out several plates and handed them to Wooyoung.

Jongho trailed after Yeosang, overly curious, the cutlery he was supposed to bring into the living room was forgotten in the clutches of his hands. He let out a little gasp the moment Yeosang opened the entrance door of their household.

A young man, slender and tall, stood in the threshold. He smiled in the awkward yet polite way someone did when they showed up unannounced at a place and weren’t quite sure if they were welcomed—but did want to make amends in case they were _ not _ welcomed.

“Hi, Yeosang-ssi,” San greeted him, nervously tugging at the sleeve of his jacket as Yeosang only stared at him. “I hope I’m not, er, intruding?”

Yeosang blinked, then slowly forced himself out of his stupor. “N-no, it’s… It’s okay. Sorry,” he apologized, feeling extremely awkward. “I just really wasn’t expecting this.”

“No, I should be the one to apologize. After all I’m showing up unannounced,” San said, then his eyes widened as they settled on someone behind Yeosang.

“Oh,” Wooyoung let out quietly.

“Who’s that?” Mingi whispered curiously, his voice way too loud.

“It’s an old friend of mine, Choi San,” Wooyoung explained, curtly. “Haven’t seen him since… April.”

“I-I’ll be right back,” Jongho stuttered, eyes wide, and he sprinted upstairs leaving the four of them alone.

The silence that followed was deafening.

Yeosang wasn’t nearly as shocked as he should’ve been by San’s unexpected presence—after all Seonghwa had said they were going to contact San as well, if they found him. What startled him more was the way San presented himself, not that this should have been a surprise either, after all, before Yeosang’s death, San had already begun to side more with his undead fellows rather than the living. He had grown interested in those undead public speakers, that claimed the PDS sufferers shouldn’t have to wear makeup and hide themselves.

Still, seeing San barefaced and without contact lenses, in the black clothes and with bright red streaks in his otherwise raven colored hair, it was a striking and intimidating image. San smiled, soft and hesitant, and opened his arms, asking for permission to hug him. Yeosang turned around to look at Wooyoung, who looked torn but did nod shortly at his childhood friend. 

Yeosang reached out, enclosing his arms around San to hug him tightly.

“I’ve missed you,” San whispered. “It’s _ really _ good to see you.”

“You too,” Yeosang told him, finding himself being a lot more honest than he would’ve thought. San and him weren’t the tightest of friends, but somehow that short period in the beginning of the year had made them become closer than he had thought. “You look… good,” he said once they pulled apart.

San laughed.

“I _ feel _ good,” he answered. He knew what Yeosang meant, he knew what the looks meant that he received. “Once I stopped hiding myself, trying to fit in, it became easier to deal with it all…” he told them, his eyes moving away from Yeosang to fall on Wooyoung. “I know that the living don’t like this, that it scares them, but… Why should I hide? I am my mistakes and my sins, makeup and contact lenses are just so others can pretend I’m not who I am.”

Wooyoung swallowed, opening his mouth to say something, but he closed it again, shaking his head mutely. “It’s good to see you again, San,” he simply said and walked back into the living room.

Jongho came down from his room, his face bare now and his contact lenses removed. He smiled shyly at San. “Would you like to stay for dinner?” he asked, still mesmerised as he stared up at San.

“I would love to!”

“What about Wooyoung?” Mingi asked, his expression still distrustful as he watched San enter the house. 

“He’ll be fine,” San said, waving his hand in the air, Mingi squinted his eyes at him and followed Wooyoung into the living room. As San removed his shoes his eyes fell on the week board and he stopped in his movements. “Jeong Yunho?” he asked, his voice a raspy whisper and his tone hollow.

Yeosang saw in his eyes the same look he had seen in Wooyoung’s when San had come back, when Yeosang had come back. That disbelief of seeing someone again, but at the same time the relief of seeing _ that _ someone again.

“Yes, he lives here with me,” Yeosang told him, watching how San’s eyes became watery.

(_ Oh, so he experiences these changes as well _, he thought thrilled and relieved.)

“He survived it?”

“Um, yeah…” Yeosang nodded his head, curious to know how San and Yunho could’ve met.

San let out a long sigh then, choking on his tears. “That’s a relief.” He smiled brokenly. Jongho gasped as tears slid down San’s face. “I thought they had killed him.”

Yeosang’s eyes widened. “Who is ‘they’?” he inquired.

San smiled hollowly, a darkness crossing his eyes that matched the one he had worn in his untreated state, when Yeosang and Wooyoung had found him in the pharmacy nearly two years ago. “The doctors at the faculty,” he revealed, his tone bitter and angry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cliff hanger oof.
> 
> ily everyone ^_^


	7. Milk Teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yunho grinned magnificently at him.
> 
> San was dead, he didn’t require breathing, yet he felt _breathless_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is focused on San and his journey, and meeting Yunho; told in bits and pieces!
> 
> I don't really like it, but I rewrote it several times and just... before I completely hate it better post it as it is :/ (there might be some errors, but i will literally SCREAM if i have to read this again djkds i'm just gonna let it rest and focus on the remaining chapters.....)
> 
> Also, **TW** for mentions of suicide and depression; and some zombie related things!

The moment San opened his eyes in the facility the first thought that crossed his mind was that his attempted suicide had failed and he was waking up in the hospital. That brief and guilt filled moment was terrible and San wanted nothing more than to claw his skin and hide himself away from the world. He wasn’t sure what to tell his parents, how to face them and his grandmother; how to face Wooyoung… A mixture of guilt and disappointment lay heavy in his head.

That was until he focused more on the room he was in, the walls were bare and humid looking, a camera was hanging from the ceiling pointing at him. The more he looked around the more he realized he was in what seemed to be a prison cell rather than hospital room, the metal bars to his left proved it even more. When San tried to move, he realized he was restrained, his wrists and ankles were strapped firmly by leather to the bed he was lying on.

He swallowed, waiting for his breath to come out ragged and panicked. He waited for his heart beat to become erratic, but nothing happened. San slowly grew aware that his heart wasn’t beating and he wasn’t breathing, yet he felt _ alive_. He tried to remember where he had been, what he had done to end up at such a place, but nothing came to mind; his thoughts were all mixed and bundled together, no sense in them. His brain was all hazy and foggy, as if he had been drugged.

Before he could even really comprehend his situation, there was a noise coming from his right, where the door of the prison was. A tall woman appeared, she had black hair pinned up in a professional bun and wore thick rimmed glasses. She wore a long, white coat, similar to a doctor’s one. She stood still and stared at him. In her hand she held a pen and a small notebook, in which she scribbled something the moment her eyes met San’s. 

“H-help,” he tried to say, but it came out raspy and sounded nothing like his own voice. It scared him. His mouth was dry and felt strange to him, foreign.

The woman raised her eyebrows in surprise at his attempted communication. She grabbed a walkie-talkie from her waist, it buzzed. “Subject 11-7 is conscious and able. I think it’s time to move on to step two of his recovery,” she spoke into the device. An answer came, but it sounded too distorted for San to understand. 

The woman opened the prison cell and waltzed inside with an aura of importance and someone you wouldn’t want to mess with. She stopped a few feet from San’s bed, staring down at him. Her brown eyes were stoic, even more so with her hair pulled back, making her facial features harder. But then she smiled hesitantly at San—warmly.

“Choi San. Am I right?” she asked, peering down at her notebook.

San nodded. He tried to say something, but couldn’t.

“Welcome back to the living!” 

“What…?” he croaked out badly, not sure if she even understood what he said.

She smiled again, a pitiful look crossing her face. “You survived the First Rising and now you have a chance at life again.”

San was going to ask her what she meant, but slowly, in his still foggy head, memories started to spill out of all corners of his mind. He remembered the moment he had decided to leave the world, he remembered the pain in his chest and his arms; the tears in his eyes—the _ relief_. 

The relief was probably the strongest memory of that afternoon.

After that, all that came to him was hunger. A hunger that he had never felt before in his life, something inhumane and primitive and violent. He remembered crawling out of his grave, around him darkness and the night sky, an owl screeching in the distance, but aside from that, nothing else. He remembered roaming the streets with others like him, that had risen out of their graves. He remembered attacking—

San choked as the pictures came to him in bits and pieces. The screams of those he had hurt. The way he and others had eaten a human. 

The gruesomeness of it all and the need to deny he had done that shook San strongly.

“It’s okay, it’s okay…” the woman mumbled soothingly as she walked over to him and brushed her hand over his forehead. She pressed her lips together and then retrieved a syringe from her white coat which she injected in San’s neck.

It took probably a minute or so of San shaking violently as she tried to calm him down until whatever she had injected in him took effect. The world around San started to fade and he fell into a tiresome and plagued with nightmares deep sleep.

The second time San regained his consciousness, he was in a hospital room together with other people lying on their beds, with nurses running about to attend them. He felt a lot less disoriented, fully aware that he had died and, somehow, come back. He knew what he had done, trying to keep those memories at bay and not let them consume him, but the moment he saw the other patients, all looking inhumane and more like monsters, San knew he was one of them. 

He was a monster.

He turned in his hospital bed to throw up, but he only dry heaved and choked, falling off of the bed and onto the floor. A nurse came running towards him and helped him up again.

“Are you all right?” the nurse asked, a concerned look on his face. He was pretty, with his long black hair parted by the side, attentive brown eyes searching his face. He couldn’t be much older than twenty.

“I’m… I don’t know,” San answered, feeling confused.

“Someone will be here for you soon, don’t worry. They’ll answer your questions,” the nurse promised.

San sat on his bed, watching blankly what was going on around him. Nurses injected the patients with something and then helped them get dressed into comfortable looking blue pants and a blue sweatshirt. They gave them a bag with what seemed to be makeup and something else, explaining them something as they showed a thick pamphlet. It was all very bizarre.

“Choi San?” the same nurse as before called out and San raised his hand. The nurse let out a soft, “Oh,” before he walked over to San. “Well, seems like I’ll be helping you adjust.” He smiled prettily. “My name is Park Seonghwa. I’m not really a nurse, but they’re searching for anyone who volunteers to help the Partially Dead Syndrome sufferers—or PDS for short—such as yourself to integrate back into society,” he explained, it sounded rehearsed and automatic. San wondered how many other people he had given the same speech to. “This facility is the biggest one in Seoul and surroundings, and we’re planning on releasing the first few of you towards Christmas.”

“Release?” San echoed, more than terrified to see his family again; to see Wooyoung again.

“Yes. Once you’re deemed stable psychologically and the medicament latched on, you’re sent home!” Seonghwa said, enthusiastic.

“Oh, no,” San mumbled, wide eyed. Seonghwa’s smile dropped slowly.

“What’s er, the matter?” he asked, then he checked the notepad he had held earlier, undoubtedly with information about San. 

“I can’t go back… I-I don’t know what I would tell them. My parents they hate me…” San rambled.

Seonghwa went still, checking the notepad again. An empathetic look flashed through his eyes, and he looked so incredibly young then.

“I’m incredibly sorry, I should’ve read your file fully instead of just—Anyway, I’m sorry,” he began stuttering out, face flushed in embarrassment and guilt. “I carry some bad news, Choi San-ssi,” he continued, swallowing. “Your parents… I’m afraid they didn’t make it.”

San stared at him.

“What,” he deadpanned.

“Your parents died during the First Rising…” Seonghwa repeated, reaching out a hand to place it on San’s shoulder. He didn’t feel the warmth of it, just its weight.

The tears that San wanted to spill didn’t come and he just ended up sitting there, pain coursing through him intensely, as he tried to understand what the nurse had told him.

His parents were dead.

“What about my-my grandma?”

“She’s alive…” Seonghwa answered, the ‘but’ hanging heavy in the air. “She hasn’t… Well… She wasn’t really open to the idea to have you back.”

San nodded his head, not really understanding. He had grown up with her, his parents often too busy to take care of him. His grandma had been such a vital part of his life, before he had committed suicide; she had been one of the reasons why he had lived for as long as he had, holding onto her love for him; and now she didn’t want to see him. She probably hated him, found him revolting—disgusting. _ A monster_, he thought to himself, _ I’m a monster_.

“I—Can I be alone, please?” he demanded. 

The nurse seemed to hesitate, but ended up leaving him alone, squeezing his shoulder tightly before he went to see if he could help somewhere else. San sat in silence as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing and seeing; thinking of the way the world had turned upside down, crazy and chaotic.

He only hoped Wooyoung was alive and wouldn’t look at him and see the monster. He hoped his friend would see just San, as he was, as he always had been; although, as he laid down on the bed, staring blankly at the white ceiling, San realized nothing would be the same. He wasn’t the same person he once had been, and he never would become.

“San-ssi, how are you finding the facility? Has everything been comfortable?” Doctor Chae asked him after he had called San in, for his daily medical check.

San nodded. “As always,” he replied.

It had been tend days since he had gotten taken out of the prison cell. He had been given clothes his size, a bag of makeup and contact lenses that he was required to put on every morning and take off every night before sleeping. He was staying in a two bedroom, but no one there to share it with. They had told him, though, that he was getting a roommate soon. San wasn’t sure how to feel about that, he usually kept to himself, only spoke to Doctor Chae, the therapist—Son Hyunwoo—and the nurse, Seonghwa. He rarely interacted with the other PDS sufferers, even if some of them seemed actually really friendly and approachable.

“I’ve been told you made great progress during therapy,” the doctor said, scanning the document lying on the table, containing San’s information and progress. “And you’ve shown, out of all our patients, to react to the medication extremely quickly and efficiently. We haven’t seen anything like that before.”

San blinked surprised. “Really?”

“Yes,” Doctor Chae affirmed. “Usually it takes the patients two weeks of adapting to the medication, experiencing relapses, having ‘nightmares’ and such… But you, you’ve shown an amazing improvement!”

San hesitated, unsure what he could say. He didn’t feel like he was improving, he felt so full of guilt, which he tried to battle during therapy, but he often lied to the therapist because he was terrified of what they’d say if he told them that he was so burdened by this all, that he didn’t know how to feel about his attempted suicide, which now was pointless because he was back again, and he didn’t want to die again, and he didn’t know what to think of _ that_, and—

San clenched his jaw.

“Have you already thought of someone you could stay with once your discharged?” Doctor Chae asked as he checked San’s pupils, the medication already on the table.

Wooyoung was the answer, but San couldn’t bring himself to say it. He was so scared to discover the truth. The day was nearing, though, and if San didn’t have a place to go to, he’d be homeless most likely. They said they were working on creating a housing system for all those that didn’t have a place to stay at, but the government wasn’t having it.

“I-I,” San stuttered, balling his hands into fists. “I have a friend.” Doctor Chae raised his eyebrows, waiting for San to continue. “Maybe… If he’s alive and-and doesn’t hate _ rotters_—”

“San-ssi,” the doctor interrupted him, a stern yet soft look on his face. “You know we don’t like you calling yourselves that.”

“Sorry.” He wished he could take a deep breath, or sigh out a heavy sigh. “If he doesn’t hate PDS sufferers, it could be a possibility. His name is Jeong Wooyoung.”

Doctor Chae scribbled the name down. “Excellent.”

He took the syringe and placed in on the back of San’s neck, injecting the medication. San flinched, surprised that he had noticed the needle piercing into his dead skin—his _ dead _ nervous system. He wasn’t supposed to feel pain. He tried to stay as immobile as possible, hoping the doctor hadn’t noticed.

“All done!” the doctor exclaimed, and San walked out of his office, feeling dreadful and terrified.

San met Jeong Yunho on his twelfth day in the facility’s program to integrate him back into society.

San was just coming back from therapy, a bit shaken and frightened—the memories of whom he had killed and eaten very vivid behind his eyelids. It was something that had started to happen more, his memories becoming vivid and so, so real. He didn’t know if that was good or bad, the therapist and Doctor Chae just looked at him like he was a puzzle they yearned to solve.

He was a test subject, he knew as much. He just hoped he could leave, that they weren’t going to hold him there and experiment on him. He grimaced at the thought.

When he opened the door to his room, Seonghwa was inside, speaking softly to someone sitting on the bed opposite San’s, that had always been empty.

“Ah, there he is!” Seonghwa said, rather loudly. He turned around to face San, a radiant and nervous smile on his face. “Choi San-ssi, meet your new roommate, Jeong Yunho. You were born the same year, isn’t that great?”

San was taken aback by how tall Yunho was. His makeup wasn’t applied, but he did wear brown contact lenses. His hair was dark brown, nearly black, and slightly curled. He had a peculiar grin on his face, a bit mischievous but at the same time extremely warm. He seemed confident when he approached San.

“Hi, nice to meet you!” Yunho grinned magnificently at him.

San was dead, he didn’t require breathing, yet he felt _ breathless_.

“Um,” he let out intelligently. “Likewise.”

“I was going to show Yunho around, but perhaps you’d like to do the honor?” Seonghwa addressed San, a wonderfully polite smile on his face. He seemed nervous still, for some reason.

“I’d like that,” Yunho said before San could even think about it.

“Sure, okay.”

“Awesome, then I’ll be on my way!” Seonghwa left hastily, nearly forgetting his documents.

“What’s up with him?” San asked once they were alone in the room, to break the awkward silence over them.

Yunho’s friendly demeanor dropped at the question, his lips pressing together into a thin line. “There’s… There are some complications with my case,” was all he said to that.

San was curious, naturally, but he didn’t further ask.

He had learned that everyone—PDS sufferers and doctors alike—had their scars and terrible stories from the First Rising; no one had been spared to grow scars on their bodies, minds, and hearts.

“Let me show you around then,” San said, leading them to the door of the room. “This corridor is basically just rooms upon rooms where we all live. The third floor you probably already know and we don’t need to check it out.” He led Yunho to the elevator. 

Yunho laughed dryly. “Yes, I’d rather not go to the third floor. I’m glad once I’m out of here and don’t have to see a doctor or a nurse ever again!”

San smiled ruefully. “Seonghwa hyung isn’t that bad.”

“You’re right, he isn’t. He’s too good for this.”

San frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Ah, nothing, doesn’t matter.”

It wasn’t nothing, San could read between the lines, but again, he didn’t push.

When they reached the bottom floor he walked Yunho to the entertainment area, where most PDS sufferers were hanging out at. “Here is where we all just chill. Read books, watch movies, play games…”

“Nice! I’ve missed playing games!” His eyes sparkled as he wistfully looked at the gaming console put up, a group of rather young PDS sufferers sitting around it and bickering back and forth.

“I’m not much of a gamer myself…” San admitted, leaving out the part that he rarely hung out in this area.

“Really? I shall change that! I challenge you to play something with me,” Yunho said, excited.

San didn’t have a choice, he just nodded his head.

He remembered before dying, how his feelings for Wooyoung had always made him join in on the fun, whether it was games or watching a movie at the cinema, or take walks around Seoul; build a snowman during wintertime. When San was in love he became so devoted and ready to give his all… Tragically his love was doomed by society, and the moment he realized being gay wasn’t an easy path, and Wooyoung most likely would’ve hated him; San had felt so hopeless and had ended up loathing himself for these feelings.

He shook himself out of his thoughts. He wasn’t even sure if he could fall in love anymore, he was dead, his heart didn’t work anymore, how was he supposed to love again. How could he allow himself to love when he had killed someone.

“Are you all right?” Yunho asked, curiously looking at him when San had stopped walking.

“Sorry, I was just—” He shook his head. “It’s whatever. Come on, let me show you the gym.”

“Sure.”

An hour later they sat in front of the TV, both with controllers in hand, and playing some game San had never seen in his life. He was abysmally bad at it, which entertained Yunho infinitely; and San found that he rather liked having the other boy laughing loudly and excitedly, trying to explain the game to San as they passed through the levels.

_ Maybe_, San though, _ it wouldn’t be so bad to befriend someone in here_.

When December broke in and the date of the release approached, San grew apprehensive. They hadn’t said a word about Wooyoung, hadn’t even mentioned his release again, as if suddenly they didn’t want him to leave.

Yunho didn’t speak much of leaving either, but he had different motives. Over the past days they had bonded rather quickly and strongly, confiding into one another in the darkness of their room.

San had learned that Yunho had died the same year as him, at the hands of a malignant tumor that had been discovered too late. Whereas San had given his life away, not wanting it anymore, Yunho’s life had been ripped out of his hands. Way too soon, not even giving him a chance. It was strange, the contrast between their deaths. 

Whereas San had been hesitant at first about the facility and the programs, having his difficulties adapting to this place and go through with it all; Yunho had seemed extremely happy to be having a second chance at life, he partook in all the programs and tests the doctors and psychologists had them go through. It was visible how badly he wanted to leave the facility and live again. San envied him a bit.

But even Yunho, with his happy and bright personality, life pouring out of his fingertips even if he was technically dead, had a breaking point. Of course he would have, everyone had, and every PDS sufferer had those memories of what they had done, for some of them they were less terrible for others more.

San was just back from meeting with Doctor Chae, and when he opened the room to their room, he was surprised to find Yunho screaming. He was yelling terrible, _ terrible _ things and throwing around the few objects in their room.

San stood froze, staring in astonishment.

Yunho looked so distraught, his eyes wild and shimmering, as if tears would spill out any moment—which shouldn’t be possible. 

San had done a good job at keeping up his walls, even if Yunho had broken them down a bit and made him talk, open up about the things he had been too afraid to tell the therapists, he still had been good at maintaining a certain control over his emotions. Seeing Yunho, though, so incredibly undone and desperate, so raw and real. It broke the dam.

San rushed over to the tall boy, his arms coming up around him to stop him from throwing more things, of possibly hurting himself.

“I’m here,” he whispered soothingly into Yunho’s back.

Yunho tensed, then shuddered, a tiny breath escaping him. (_It shouldn’t be possible_, San thought terrified.)

The two had stood in the middle of the room for a while, San back hugging Yunho to calm him down, until a nurse came and took Yunho away. When he came back hours later, he didn’t speak of it, but he looked incredibly distraught and tired; whatever the psychologists had done to him, told him, it had changed him.

San wanted to reach out, hug him tightly and whisper to him that it would be all right, but San didn’t know, he couldn’t promise him something so empty; so he stayed in his own bed, listening in on the sobs escaping Yunho. It was a heart wrenching sound, they weren’t supposed to breath or cry or feel, yet Yunho was doing all that, dying on the inside. San felt his own chest hurt and he knew he was close to crying, as impossible as it should’ve been.

Two nights after Yunho’s burst of anger and hopelessness, he opened up quietly. The darkness around them felt too big and too whole, but maybe that was what Yunho needed to be able to speak of it.

“My parents are dead,” he revealed, his voice so quiet that for a moment San thought he had dreamt it up, a fragment of his imagination, but then Yunho laughed emptily. “They were killed by a-a _ rotter_.” The way he said the word, full of despair. Self loathing.

San frowned, turning around in his bed, to look where he knew Yunho was lying. In the pitch black room he could barely make out the small bulge that was his roommate. San got up from his bed and walked over to him, he laid down next to the boy, who tensed at first but slowly relaxed in San’s arms.

“I’m sorry,” San whispered. “It’s not your fault,” he added.

Yunho didn’t say anything in reply.

A week before the release San got the news that Wooyoung had accepted his request to live with him. If San had been alive he would have cried and his heart would’ve beaten fast and in relief, but he was dead—well undead, _ something_. He just gave a shaky smile to the doctor that gave him the news, then he walked to the community room to sit with other PDS sufferers.

He still hadn’t really befriended any of them, with the exception of Yunho. He felt strange around them, some of them seemed even more resigned and hurt than him about being alive again; others were aggressive in their opinions and thought they were something better. That death had given them a clearer and more superior vision about life.

San felt pretty much the same as before dying. He didn’t know what to do with his life, he was scared and terrified of the future, even more so now. He cared about what others would think. He cared what Wooyoung would think once he’d see him. He was scared of his feelings towards his best friend, once they had been of love—more than platonic love—but now he wasn’t sure what he really would feel once he’d see Wooyoung again.

He didn’t believe he still held a crush, those kind of feelings felt like a luxury to him now.

“San-ssi!” Yunho was sitting in front of a retro looking gaming machine. He held a controller and waved it in the air in question. “Come play with me,” he added with a pout as San hesitated whether he was up to play video games with his roommate or not.

With a sigh San approached him and sat down next to him, grabbing the controller.

“So what did your old friend say?” Yunho asked as he pressed play.

San swallowed. “He said he’s taking me in. I can’t believe it.”

Yunho smiled. “That’s great!”

“What about you?” San finally asked.

On screen their pixelated characters were going through a maze.

“They’re still discussing where I’ll be sent to,” Yunho answered after a while. “As you know, my parents are dead.” The haunting look on his face whenever he mentioned his parents was heartbreaking, yet San looked at him every time he spoke of them. He didn’t know why he did, except that he had come to care deeply for Yunho and wanted his happiness; he rooted for him to one day be free of his burden.

San looked away, swallowed, and tried not to think about it too much.

“I’m sorry,” he said instead.

Yunho shrugged.

They played in silence after that.

The day San saw Wooyoung again he wanted to throw up.

Wooyoung cried hysterically, the friend he had come with hugging him tightly to soothe him. The boy was familiar, Kang Yeosang if San wasn’t wrong. He used to attend their high school, a rather quiet person without many friends.

Before San left, Yunho called out for him in the hallway. He was running towards him.

“We will wait outside,” Yeosang said and took a still very undone Wooyoung with him.

“Yes, I’ll be out shortly,” Sand told him, turning towards Yunho, who was now standing with them. “Hey.” San felt awkward about leaving, he didn’t want to leave Yunho behind —once they were out of the facility they weren’t really allowed to come back, not even to visit. He’d miss Yunho.

In the short period they had spent together he had come to really care for the other. Yunho had made the stay so much more bearable, he had brought light into the gray walled building, happiness into San’s sadness, and made his confusion turn into hope.

“Hey,” Yunho said back, he reached into his trousers’ pocket and retrieved a small piece of paper. There was a name and address scribbled on it. “If you… If you ever need a place to stay, go there. I’ll be there once my case gets cleared.” He shoved it into San’s hand.

San was surprised, but he took it. Then he returned his gaze towards Yunho once again, memorizing his face. He felt as though he wouldn’t see him for a long time and needed to properly  _ see _ his face one last time so he wouldn’t forget. This felt too much like a definite goodbye, even if he didn’t want it to.

“Yunho, I,” he began, trembling, “I’m sorry I’m leaving.”

“No, it’s okay, you deserve to get out of here. We all do. I’m glad you have someone to stay with,” Yunho told him, shaking his head. “But I’ll miss you. I felt a bit guilty earlier because I was so jealous that you could leave, and maybe a bit selfish, too. Part of me wanted you to stay here—with me,” he admitted the last part quietly, his eyes leaving San’s.

San could swear he felt his heart flutter in his chest, like a butterfly during wintertime that was taking its last breaths, about to die.

“I wish it could have been different, that we could have left together…” he said, his hands itching to hold Yunho’s. He yearned to hug him, for one last time. “I hope we meet again.”

“I hope so, too.” Yunho smiled wonderfully then, the sadness in his eyes and the shake to his voice, it all made San feel for him with his entire being, and he leaned forward without realizing, embracing Yunho tightly.

Yunho returned the hug, clinging to San’s jacket like his life depended on it. “I’ll miss you,” he muttered.

“I’ll miss you, too.”

When they parted it was so incredibly hard to turn his back on Yunho and walk out of the facility to join the living, but it was what San did, with each step he could feel a tiny part in his heart break and die. Nothing made sense anymore, he was so utterly lost when he reunited with Wooyoung and Yeosang.

It was funny how sudden and drastically life’s priorities could change; just one person had turned San’s life upside down.

“You all right?” Yeosang asked him, sensing that San wasn’t doing so good.

He gave him a watery smile and a weak nod. “Yes, let’s go.”

In the following weeks, San wondered more than once if it had been a mistake to ask if he could live with Wooyoung; it was so awkward and unpleasant, especially once he discovered that Wooyoung and Yeosang had been part of the HVF, who were known for their hatred towards PDS sufferers. 

These days there were countless headlines speaking of the Human Volunteer Force not being needed anymore and pointing out how toxic it had become. Much to San’s surprise and relief his friends left the anti-PDS sufferer group, and instead Wooyoung started focusing on reconnecting with San, but soon the two of them realized how uncomfortable the whole matter was. Unspoken words, actions and experiences that separated them; and San knew that they needed to go their own ways, discover who they were with these brand new labels set upon them, in this new society, before they could become San and Wooyoung again.

Early in the new year San decided to seek out the address Yunho had left him, wanting to meet more PDS sufferers. In the facility it had been too hard for him, thinking he needed to be as human as possible, to become who he was before dying —minus the wanting to end his life part—but he came to realize that he wasn’t the same, and never quite would be again.

In March, when Wooyoung’s brother moved to the military and Wooyoung began living with a friend of his, San found a new home within the PDS sufferers. They were kind and accepting, and made him understand that he deserved a place in this society just as much as those that lived did. San began to understand that he was beautiful just the way he was, without the makeup and contact lenses, that he was powerful and worthy as an undead one.

He never had seen much of unconditional love until then. They did not care that he had committed suicide, that he had killed a human in his untreated state, they didn’t even make a big deal of his sexuality; they just took in him and showed him a home.

And best of all, San was starting to believe their words. He allowed himself grow soft after all the terrible and shitty experiences he had gone through, and he started to grow hopeful again. 

The only missing piece within all of this was Yunho.

San had waited and waited, searching around the other PDS sufferers living with him and asking around if anyone had heard anything about Jeong Yunho, but no one appeared to know of him. It made San hurt a lot more than he had thought.

At first he had thought the moment he’d leave the facility and be integrated back into society, make new friends and acquaintances, that he’d forget about Yunho. That their short time would’ve stayed there, in the facility, as painful and bittersweet memories, but the more days that passed and the more San missed Yunho, it was clear it had been so much more and San wasn’t ready to let go. He didn’t want their story to be over.

In early April he walked up to the leader of the small group of PDS sufferers that had adopted San, the name Yunho had given him back in December. His name was Kihyun, he had died in a car crash, and he was pretty much in the known of anything that was happening—undead scene and alive scene alike.

“Hyung,” San spoke up quietly. Kihyun turned around in his wheelchair, cocking his head curiously at him. “You said—When I first arrived, you said that you could contact anyone. That if I ever wanted to know if someone was still alive, I could come to you…”

Kihyun nodded. “Yes, I did. Is there someone you’re looking for?”

San let out an anxious sigh. 

(That was another thing, here, with all of the undead ones, San didn’t have to hide the fact that he was experiencing things he wasn’t supposed to—according to the doctors at the facility, anyway. Kihyun himself said he felt his heart beat on some days, that more and more were experiencing things that only the living were supposed to. San felt safe there, showing that he breathed again, that he felt pain, temperatures…)

“There was someone at the faculty. He didn’t have a place to go to…”

Kihyun’s eyebrows raised at that, a displeased grimace pulling at his lips. “Those were lies. A friend of mine works there; when they want to keep you they tell you that.”

San’s hand trembled slightly. “I figured,” he muttered, thinking back to those moments he had felt as though they were trying to make him stay, not talking about his release date, if it hadn’t been for Seonghwa and Doctor Chae ushering him to get released… “His name is Jeong Yunho, I need to know if he’s alive, if he’s well. Please, hyung,” he added, begging.

Kihyun placed a warm and soothing hand on his shoulder. “I will, just don’t expect good news. If they kept him for research, I… I can’t promise anything.”

San nodded his head, feeling strange. Overly sensitive, his skin prickling, and his heart… Oh, his heart was beating. _Thump_, _thump_, _thump_; and dead again. But he felt the pain in it.

“Thank you, hyung.” With that he left, bowing his head slightly on his way out.

The answer came a week later.

“My friend at the facility is unclear on Yunho’s status; they stopped trusting him when they discovered that he, together with a nurse and other staff members, were sending PDS sufferers here, to safety,” Kihyun explained to him, scratching his neck awkwardly. “But… It’s most likely that he is dead. I’m very sorry, San. I know how that feels like.”

San choked on his breath, falling down onto his knees, and he began crying. Kihyun tried to comfort him, but he knew that it didn’t bring Yunho back, that it wouldn’t heal the pain, yet San was grateful for the warm hand on his back.

_ Yunho’s gone_, he thought on repeat, like a broken record. Then he blamed himself for having left Yunho alone, for jumping so quickly on the chance of leaving the facility. He shouldn’t have done that, he shouldn’t have left poor Yunho alone in there. The guilt was clawing at his chest and the familiar feeling of dread came rushing back, making him remember the night he had taken his own life years ago.

Then, San realized that perhaps he had developed feelings for Yunho over the short period of time they had known one another. Of course, they were faint and light as butterfly wings, but they were there, blooming in his chest and bursting like fireworks, as he realized it was too late.

San thought he knew himself, that he was a good person, but after Yeosang died, he couldn’t bear being with Wooyoung anymore. The chasm in between them had grown too big, too overwhelming, too much. And Wooyoung didn’t really seem to be comfortable around San anymore, so they parted ways, silently and without words, a mutual agreement.

The Second Rising was a miracle, the undead rejoiced and celebrated it.

San wondered how it had all happened, the First and Second Rising; there had to be a reason behind it. Many undead spoke of the First Riser being behind the Second Rising, that he had been sacrificed to let their brothers and sisters rise again; but it didn’t explain the first time. Plus, if the First Riser really had been killed, it meant that Yunho was dead for sure. San wasn’t 100% sure on the truth, but in all the conversations he had had with Yunho during their shared time in the facility, it had seemed as though his old friend had been the first one to raise out of his grave, as he had been the first one as well on whom the medication had taken effect.

San had been surprised to know that Yunho had been in the facility for such a long time, enduring being tested and experimented on for such a long and tiresome time; how he hadn’t wished to die was beyond San. _ No wonder he wanted to leave so desperately_, he thought sadly.

It didn’t really matter anymore, Yunho was dead, Kihyun had told him he should give up his hope, and if the rumors were true about the sacrifice of the First Riser, then with the Second Rising it was just verified to him that he wouldn’t see Yunho again—only in his nicest dreams and warmest memories.

San wondered if Yeosang had risen again, in the short time between San’s release and Yeosang’s death they had befriended one another tentatively. Yeosang had been still as shy and quiet as San remembered him from high school, and he had appeared to be rather fond of Wooyoung—the same fondness San once had felt towards his old friend.

These days, more than ever, San felt lonely, so he joined Kihyun’s group of rebellious undead ones that fought for the equality between the PDS sufferers and those that were alive.

Towards the end of the year San was called in by Kihyun.

Their leader’s office in the headquarters was a rather big room, now a lot more comfortable than it had been months ago; their fight had resulted victorious, more and more rights were given to the PDS sufferers, and Kihyun had started to change his way of working, helping those living with him to get a normal life again—or as normal as it could be, having died, San supposed.

He stepped into the room, the lightning was dim, and next to Kihyun sat a young man, his face hidden as he had it turned downwards, checking his phone.

“Hyung, you wanted to speak with me?” San inquired, nervously.

“Ah, yes, San, come in,” Kihyun beckoned him over.

The stranger looked up and San gasped. It was the nurse from the facility, Park Seonghwa. He looked exactly the same, except a tenfold softer. He smiled warmly at San.

“Long time no se, San-ssi! How have you been?

“I’ve been… good. It’s been a couple of strange months, if I’m honest,” he admitted.

Seonghwa nodded his head. “I’m glad you’re still alive and doing well.”

“Seonghwa is here on behalf of the PDS sufferer Housing System; it got approved a while ago,” Kihyun explained, showing a pamphlet to San, who took it interested and with a nod of his head. 

“An old friend of yours was released recently, and as part of his program of reintegration into society, he’s supposed to meet those before his death,” Seonghwa recited. “Kang Yeosang.”

“Oh,” San exhaled. “Has he explicitly said he wanted to reconnect with me?” he asked, curiously. It surprised him, he rather thought Yeosang was closer to Wooyoung.

Seonghwa shook his head. “No, but he didn’t have many people, so… Plus I thought it could be good for him to speak to you, considering you’re also a PDS sufferer… It might help him.”

“I’ll think about it,” San told him. “Is, er, Jeong Wooyoung going to be there? He was Yeosang’s friend, too.”

“I can’t disclose on that, sorry,” Seonghwa said, giving him a guilty smile. “But you shouldn’t worry, all of this isn’t as bad as you think it is. Yeosang and Wooyoung might not have the same worries as you about this. In my experience, everyone is nervous and terrified, but once it happens you’ll feel so much lighter.”

San nodded, scratching his neck awkwardly. “Well, then, I’ll come by soon.”

“That would be great!” Seonghwa smiled brightly; San had missed that smile, it was incredibly comforting. “I’ll leave some documents here that I will need you to sign, and the address of the house Yeosang is living in. If you want to come by anytime to hang out or, possibly in the future, to live, we can arrange that. They’re expanding it soon!” He got up from his seat, squeezing Kihyun’s shoulder, a look crossing his face, Kihyun nodded. “I have to go and speak with Hyungwon hyung about important business. You remember Doctor Chae, don’t you, San?”

San nodded his head, a bit dazed. It was a lot of information he was receiving.

Yeosang had raised, he was living in a housing system, that perhaps San could move into as well if he so desired. As much as he liked being with Kihyun in the tall building and all the other PDS sufferers, learning all about loving and accepting himself; he yearned normalcy as well. The idea of possibly getting a job and living in a different place, one that wasn’t as impersonal as the headquarters.

On one fateful day in November, San had just spent two hours, together with other PDS sufferers, preaching about their rights near the university—now that they were allowed to study, they tried to work towards a no bullying policy, serving PDS sufferer friendly food at the cafeteria, and other programs on their agenda.

After wrapping up their speech and saying goodbye to his friends and colleagues, San wanted to grab a quick coffee and watch the Christmas lights before going home. An ad about the PDS sufferer Housing System caught his eyes and without realizing it his feet brought him to the house Yeosang lived in. He had walked up to it many times, never finding the courage to ring the doorbell, but that afternoon it was different. He stood right there and without thinking about it for too long he rang.

He heard voices inside, muffled and quiet, and seconds later Yeosang opened the door. His eyes were wide, he blinked in surprise. Somewhere behind him was a young man, small yet broad shouldered.

“Hi, Yeosang-ssi,” San greeted him. “I hope I’m not, er, intruding?” 

Maybe this was a bad idea, San thought to himself as he was met with silence.

Yeosang blinked again. “N-no, it’s… It’s okay. Sorry,” he said in an apologetic tone. “I just really wasn’t expecting this.”

“No, I should be the one to apologize. After all I’m showing up unannounced,” San said, wanting to say more, but his eyes fell on a familiar figure in the background. _ Fuck_, he nearly said out loud.

“Oh.” Wooyoung looked pretty much the same, except the sadness he had worn with himself after Yeosang’s death; the hunched shoulders, the constant grimace and frown, the far away look in his eyes… It was all gone, he looked almost dazed.

“Who’s that?” someone San didn’t know said loudly. He was tall, intimidating looking. Another PDS sufferer, San noticed.

“It’s an old friend of mine, Choi San,” Wooyoung explained. “Haven’t seen him since April.”

“I-I’ll be right back,” the short boy said shyly and bolted out of the welcoming hall.

There was a silence that followed, the four boys standing by the threshold eyeing one another curiously and awkwardly; then Yeosang moved forward, reaching out his arms to presumably hug San, who felt himself sag in relief.

“I’ve missed you,” San whispered. “It’s _ really _ good to see you.”

“You too,” Yeosang told him, surprisingly. “You look good.” 

“I _ feel _ good,” he answered. “Once I stopped hiding myself, trying to fit in, it became easier to deal with it all… I know that the living don’t like this, that it scares them, but… Why should I hide? I am my mistakes and my sins, makeup and contact lenses are just so others can pretend I’m not who I am.”

“It’s good to see you again, San,” Wooyoung said, his tone strange, and San slowly realized that he was living, and that his comment had probably sounded rude and aggressive, which he hadn’t meant. 

He was about to apologize when the same boy as before came running back, his face wasn’t coated in makeup anymore and his contact lenses were removed. San thought that he looked familiar now, maybe he had seen him around.

“Would you like to stay for dinner?” he asked out of the blue, surprising San.

_ Should I…? _ he wondered, looking at Yeosang, who didn’t seem opposed, and this was about reconnecting with his after all. “I would love to!” San responded, smiling at the young boy.

“What about Wooyoung?” the tall one asked, clearly irritated.

San didn’t like that he was being treated so unfairly by his stranger, they were both PDS sufferers, they should stick together and not against one another. “He’ll be fine,” San replied way too quickly—probably again coming off as rudely. _ I’m here for Yeosang, this has nothing to do with Wooyoung_, he thought. There would come a time he’d reconnect with Wooyoung properly, healing and talking about everything that had caused the chasm in between them.

Wooyoung and the tall boy left, the short broad one stayed to just keep staring at San as if he was a wonder. San smiled abashedly, lowering his head so he could remove his shoes, and then his eyes fell on a paper stuck to the wall. It looked like a calendar of some sorts, to assign people chores, and he was going to look away as it was none of his business, but his eyes read a name he didn’t think he’d read again. _ Jeong Yunho_.

It couldn’t be, they had said he was most likely dead, the Second Rising had happened and Yunho had been sacrificed for it to happen, there was no way it was him, yet it was his name; and really, how many PDS sufferers named Jeong Yunho could there be?

“Jeong Yunho?” he read the name with a bit of question in his voice and looked at Yeosang—hoping, wishing, yearning… 

Yeosang seemed to detect the urgency in his voice and gaze as his eyes softened.

“Yes, he lives with me here.”

San could feel the tears welling up in his eyes, Yeosang didn’t seem particularly surprised or bothered by it.

“He survived it?” San asked, needing to know for sure.

Yeosang nodded his head. San sighed and felt the tears roll out of his eyes, the overwhelming relief nearly making him choke. He needed to lay down and cry. _ Yunho was alive, holy shit. _ “That’s a relief. I thought they had killed him.”

“Who?”

He knew Kihyun would scold him if he revealed the truth just like that, they were working on a long and detailed file to have the facility shut down, or at least be given into different hands—someone that wasn’t anti-PDS sufferers, that didn’t see them as animals to be experimented on. “The doctors at the faculty,” he finally answered, clenching his jaw as anger grew in his heart.

He had learned so much about what the doctors there did, what they had done to Yunho and others, what sacrifices they had committed to develop the medication, pretending they were saints and God’s gift. It was truly terrible. San knew, of course, that in the beginning, to even know what was wrong with the PDS sufferers, they had needed to take samples and study the undead, but the monstrous ways in which they had done that were inhumane. 

It showed that the living were as much monsters as the undead ones.

Yeosang was visibly shocked at that revelation, the young boy in the background, too, was stunned into silence, both of them staring at San with their eyes wide as saucers.

“Yunho hyung will be back in ten minutes,” the young boy suddenly said, quietly. 

San stared at him, making sense of the words, and he panicked. “He-He’s coming _ here_?”

Yeosang nodded. “Yes. As I said, he lives here…” he said. “Do you still want to stay? It’s understandable if you would rather leave and maybe come back another time…”

San hesitated.

He had yearned for so long to see Yunho again, and after receiving the news that his friend was possibly dead, he had mourned him—still did—but now it turned out that he wasn’t actually dead, that San could see him again. It was a lot; this whole evening had turned into a lot. He had thought he’d just pop in and drink a cup of something with Yeosang; not see Wooyoung again, meet two random strangers one of which seemed to adore him, whereas the other disliked him. Reencountering Yunho just felt like the cherry on top.

But he wanted it so desperately; he had no idea how he’d react, how Yunho would react.

He swallowed. “I think I want to stay anyway.” _ There’s a lot I need to tell him_, he thought to himself. He had had a lot of time to think about what Yunho meant to him, how important his presence had become for San, even in such a short and supposedly insignificant time.

Sometimes there simply were no reasons, it just clicked and felt right.

“Okay, then, come inside,” Yeosang said and stepped aside. “By the way, this is Choi Jongho, the youngest. The tall one is Song Mingi, he goes to university with Wooyoung.”

San nodded his head in acknowledgement, then he glanced at Jongho. “It’s nice to meet you, Jongho-ssi.”

The youngest yelped. “Y-You too,” he stuttered out, he would flush if he had any blood running through his veins.

They moved to sit with the others in the living room, an awkward atmosphere reigning over them. Mingi and Wooyoung sat opposite from Yeosang and San, Jongho sat by the edge of the table, apprehensively eyeing the scene unfold as he nibbled his lower lip.

“Seonghwa hyung will be here shortly,” Mingi said to no one in particular, occasionally he’d look at San with watchful eyes. It was clear he didn’t like him one bit. “He said he’ll help us with dinner. Yunho will be here like any second,” he added and San felt his heart beat faintly.

It happened a lot more lately.

“So,” San started awkwardly, “what do you study?” he asked.

Wooyoung blinked at him, then launched into an explanation of what him and Mingi were taking, and slowly the tense air dissolved. Yeosang stayed quiet, while Jongho explained that he was in his last year of high school, retaking it so he could study the following year, too. San felt a bit detached, he hadn’t even thought about working or studying, of retaking his exams, he had been so focused on Kihyun’s mission and the greater good for the PDS sufferers; but maybe it was time for him to look for different paths, too.

When the front door opened again around ten minutes later, San tensed in his seat, held his breath, even though he wasn’t necessarily breathing. (Sometimes he found himself breathing, without realizing, other times his lungs were just as dead as they had been after rising out of his grave.)

Seconds later a tall and painfully familiar boy walked in, he wore contact lenses and makeup, his black hair was slightly curly, and he was smiling nervously as he eyed the crowd.

“That’s a lot more people than I expected,” he said laughing, but then he stopped, dropping the bag he was holding. His eyes met San’s and he stood speechless in the living room. “San?” he croaked out.

The other occupants in the room watched the two young men with rapt curiosity.

San slowly got out of his seat and walked over to Yunho. He felt his heart beat in strange intervals. _ Thump, thump_, silence, _ thump_, silence, _ thumpthumpthump_; it was maddening. He could feel his lungs constrict and his hands tremble, and much to his surprise he felt himself flush under Yunho’s undone and shocked gaze. San knew there were tears shimmering in his eyes, he knew he looked more human than he had in a long time, but he didn’t care anymore; he didn’t want to hide that he was _ feeling_.

“Yunho,” he said quietly, his voice breaking. He felt wrecked. Seeing Yunho again just made him realize how much he had missed him, how much he had loved him—_still _ loved him. “Yunho, I—” he began, but was cut off the moment Yunho rushed forward and embraced him in a tight hug. San lifted his arms to hold Yunho, hiding his face in the other’s neck. The tears were now spilling out, uncontrollably.

“San, you’re… You’re here?” Yunho whispered in disbelief.

“Yes, I’m here,” San answered when he found his voice, muffled as he still had his face buried by Yunho’s neck. He never wanted to leave again. “You’re here, too. I thought… I thought you were dead,” he said after he had pulled away, eyeing the taller one; Yunho was searching his face.

Yunho’s voice was shaking when he spoke again, “I almost did die, if it weren’t for Seonghwa hyung.”

“Are they crying?” San heard Wooyoung ask in a hushed voice.

“Seems so,” Mingi replied, the astonishment in his voice palpable. “I thought Yeosang was the only one.”

“Dude,” Yeosang said, affronted.

“You can cry?” Wooyoung asked, surprised.

“Yes,” Yeosang replied after a short silence. “I’m changing. It appears I’m not the only one.”

Yunho’s eyes moved away from San to settle onto the other ones for a brief moment, then he looked back at San, the shock and overwhelming relief slowly ebbing out as they became clearer and brighter, a fond smile growing on his face.

“You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you, San,” he said, still quietly, as if he didn’t want the others to hear.

“I think I can, for I feel the same,” he told him, desperate to let Yunho know just how much.

“I don’t think you understand—” Yunho was telling him, a wistful smile on his smile.

“No, I do. I-I’ve wished for this for a long time. There’s so much I never told you, so much regret about leaving you, and… And it seems impossible to fall in love at first sight, I always thought it was rather ridiculous, but then I met you,” he confessed in a rush, nearly breaking off out of fear. Even if he thought he knew Yunho felt the same, there was still a chance he didn’t, that he simply cared for San as a close friend, but San didn’t want to lose him again without the other at least knowing.

Yunho smiled brighter, his eyes twinkling. “I wasn’t sure before because I thought I’d never see you again, so I worked hard on burying these feelings… But I do adore you. I fell for you at first sight, too.”

San couldn’t fight the giddiness. After a year of dreadfulness, of dealing with so much pain and horror, this was incredibly rewarding. He stood up on his tiptoes and just let it happen. Yunho’s lips were soft yet cold, but San wouldn’t change it for anything.

“They’re kissing!” Mingi hissed in surprise.

“Don’t ruin it, hyung,” Jongho scolded him.

Yunho broke the kiss off as laughter spilled out his lips, and San laughed as well. Nothing mattered at that moment, everything just felt perfect and as if it was meant to happen like this all along.

“This surely was surprising,” Yeosang muttered, his eyes meeting Wooyoung’s, a nervous twinkle in them, but Wooyoung just smiled softly at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last two chapters are gonna be posted in january! I just moved and am job/flat hunting so its very hectic lmao  
But to everyone, happy holidays and happy new year in advance ^__^


	8. Sweetheart, What Have You Done To Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You always look beautiful to me," Wooyoung promised him.

When Yunho opened the door to have San leave, there was a thin layer of snow covering the front patio, Seonghwa’s car had been a victim as well. An early snow and Yeosang didn’t harbor any hopes that it would survive to see the next day.

“Thank you for letting me stay during dinner,” San said, bowing slightly with a smile. He turned to address Yunho. “Now that you have my number, call me. Please,” he added the last bit quietly, only meant for Yunho. Yeosang stepped back into the house, not wanting to intrude in their private moment. He caught a glimpse of Yunho leaning forward and kissing San again.

Yeosang stumbled into someone, letting out a surprised yelp. He felt arms slinging around him and stabilizing him. The person was grasping Yeosang’s waist tightly. A familiar scent encircled him and momentarily he froze in those arms, his chest trembled with the phantom of a wild heartbeat.

“Thanks,” he mumbled and turned around once the person had stepped back. Wooyoung smiled at him. “You said Hongjoong hyung was picking you up soon?” he asked to distract himself from the warmth he still could feel on his waist, where Wooyoung’s arms had been.

Seeing San and Yunho kiss one another, both dead yet so full of love and adoration for each other, had made Yeosang realize with a frightening clarity that not only was he in love with Wooyoung, but had been for a while.

“Yes. He texted me, saying he’ll be here shortly,” Wooyoung replied. Something flickered through his eyes. “Listen, Yeosang,” he began quietly, his eyes flitting over to Yunho and San’s figures, too preoccupied with each other to notice anything around them. “About my birthday coming up soon, I really meant it when I said that I wanted to celebrate with you. Will you really come?”

Yesoang nodded, his heart aching at Wooyoung’s uncertainty. “Yes,” he breathed, embarrassingly eager. But it did not matter the moment Wooyoung’s face lit up with a beautiful smile.

“Awesome!” He swung back and forth on his heels, regarding Yeosang with a peculiar look. “We’ve celebrated it the past two years, but somehow this is kind of the first—_first_—time that we will actually celebrate it.”

“That’s true. The other years it was always so… dreadful. Understandingly, so.” Wooyoung searched his face, and Yeosang knew that look. Wooyoung was thinking about something he wanted to ask but had no clue how to formulate his question. “What is it?”

Wooyoung sucked in his bottom lip nervously. “You-you cried? Earlier, Mingi said that you cried.”

“Ah, yes. I did.” Yeosang had dreaded this conversation.

“So, you’re… becoming human again?”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know, Wooyoung. I have no idea what’s happening with me, but it has been happening to a lot of Partially Dead ones.”

Wooyoung swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Does your heart—Do you feel your heartbeat?”

Instead of answering him, Yeosang grabbed Wooyoung’s hand, whose breath hitched, and lead it towards his chest, where his heart lay. Just as he had suspected, merely holding Wooyoung’s hand and having him this close, did wonders to making him feel alive. Faintly his heart stuttered in his chest.

“Holy shit!” Wooyoung’s eyes widened comically.

“Yes. It’s been happening more often recently, ever since—” he stopped himself abruptly, feeling shy. Wooyoung stared at him, waiting for him to continue. “It doesn’t matter.” The smile Yeosang gave him was strained.

Yunho walked passed them, glancing at them with a dreamy look in his eyes. He did shoot Yeosang a peculiar look, though, his eyebrows raised and a small smirk blooming on his face. Yeosang stepped back from Wooyoung, anxiously. When had he gotten so brave?

Seonghwa and Jongho came out of the kitchen, the former holding a full trash bag.

“Could one of you open the door for me?” Seonghwa asked, his nose scrunched up, holding the garbage at an arm’s length.

“Of course.” Yeosang sprung into motion, opening the door for him. In the distance he saw a car come up the driveway, its lights nearly blinding him. “I think Hongjoong hyung has arrived,” he said over his shoulder at Wooyoung.

His friend nodded his head and quickly went into the living room to bid his goodbyes to the other occupants of the house, then he reunited with Yeosang in the entrance hall, putting on his shoes and winter coat.

Seonghwa was coming back, staring at the car curiously.

“Are we expecting even more guests?” he asked, addressing Yeosang with a stern look on his face.

“No, that’s just my hyung picking me up.”

“Oh, all right.” Seonghwa nodded, shivering as he joined them inside the house. “Then I shall meet him.”

Hongjoong parked his car next to Seonghwa’s and turned the engine off, bathing the garden and patio in darkness. He stepped out seconds later. Yeosang hadn’t seen him months, but he didn’t look any different. 

Seonghwa let out a small gasp. “_Fuck_,” he mumbled. “Oh, no.”

Yeosang and Wooyoung glanced at him before they exchanged amused looks.

“Wooyoung!” Hongjoong greeted him, walking up the few steps until he stopped in front of them. “And Yeosang, and—” He staggered backwards, nearly slipping off the last step, but he grabbed the door’s frame to stop himself from falling. He stared with his jaw dropped at Seonghwa. He cleared his throat, straightening up, and regarding the man with the raven hair with a blank look, all of his surprise vanishing. “Seonghwa.” He nodded his head in acknowledgement.

“Oh, come on.” Seonghwa rolled his eyes. “Aren’t we past childish resentfulness?”

Hongjoong bit the inside of his cheek, glancing at Wooyoung and Yeosang, who were watching the exchange enraptured. “Well, you never apologized!”

Seonghwa smirked. “Then let me tell you right here, right now, in front of these witnesses, that I am sorry, Hongjoong. I’m sorry for not understanding your unclear intentions more clearly. It won’t happen again.”

“Ugh.” Hongjoong rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I’m here to pick Wooyoung up and nothing else.”

“You two can talk inside, I won’t mind!” Wooyoung promised him. He grinned teasingly at Hongjoong.

“No.” Hongjoong shook his head, to which Seonghwa let out a resigned sigh, looking rather sad. Hongjoong must’ve picked up on it because he continued, “Maybe some other time, though.”

Seonghwa contemplated it and finally nodded his head. “Sure.” He turned towards Wooyoung. “It was lovely meeting you. You can come by any time.” With that he left into the living room. 

Yeosang glanced at Wooyoung, smiling warily. This was goodbye. Even if he knew that his old friend lived in Seoul and had literally just invited him to his birthday, Yeosang was still so used to all these months without Wooyoung. It felt too fresh, that they were back at being a team.

He swallowed, wanting to hug him, but it felt too private and intimate. Plus, Hongjoong stood by the threshold eyeing them curiously.

“Well…” Wooyoung began. “I’ll see you around?”

“Yes, definitely!” Yeosang smiled, some of his tension easing. Wooyoung leaned forward, his left hand coming up to squeeze Yeosang’s shoulder. Then he joined Hongjoong outside.

“Goodbye, Yeosang!” they both called out as they left.

Yeosang watched them drive away, only once he could no longer see the car’s lights did he close the door.

He let out a long sigh. _ What an evening _, he thought to himself, coming down from the roller coaster.

Someone cleared their throat behind him and he turned around startled.

“So,” Mingi started, his eyebrows raised in curiosity, “you and Wooyoung, huh?”

Yeosang felt himself flush faintly. “Shut up!” He brushed past Mingi, who let out a loud laugh.

“Adorable!” his house mate called after him.

Seoul’s traffic had them stuck somewhere near their shared flat. The car drive was filled with soft tunes, Hongjoong was clutching the steering wheel tightly, his face clouded by whatever thoughts were running through his head.

“From where do you know Park Seonghwa, hyung?” Wooyoung finally asked, his curiosity getting the best of him.

Hongjoong startled out of his thoughts, swallowing. He shot Wooyoung an embarrassed smile. “High school. We did not really get along at first… I was kind of a dick to him.”

“Really?” Wooyoung asked surprised. Hongjoong was usually respectful and nice towards anyone he met—maybe with the exception of his father, but that was valid, as his father was a homophobic douchebag.

“Yes.” Hongjoong nodded his head. His right hand fell from the steering wheel onto the gear stick. “I uhm, had a crush on him back then,” he admitted, biting his bottom lip. His cheeks were flushed. “I didn’t know how to show my liking towards him so I behaved like an ass.”

Wooyoung laughed. He could picture it. “I think he likes you.”

Hongjoong shrugged. “We’ll see,” he said mysteriously, but it was clear that Wooyoung’s comment had pleased him as a small smile was tugging at his lips. “What about you and Yeosang? You seemed oddly close back there. Not in the same way you were during and after the First Rising.”

Wooyoung looked out of the window, watching the city and traffic lights. He shifted in his seat. “I suppose death changes things.”

“It does,” Hongjoong agreed with a short nod.

“When I saw him walk into the room, it was as if all rain clouds had just dissipated. I don’t know.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I never had given it much thought, how much Yeosang meant to me—Or rather, I had never realized it until tonight.”

“Do you like him?” Hongjoong asked him easily.

“I don’t know,” Wooyoung repeated. “Maybe I do, hyung,” he confessed quietly. He felt small in the confined space of the car. “I liked San in high school. After his death those feelings were replaced by anger and guilt; it was a fucked up exchange. Somewhere during the First Rising I think I realized that they had vanished completely, especially when I saw him again in the facility. Which sounds fucked up.” He wasn’t sure why he was opening up then. There was something about sitting in a car that promised for the truth to stay in there, a sacred place where he could just speak freely. “I think it was after San came back that I started to grow closer to Yeosang, and then he died as well. I dealt with his death much better than I did with San’s. Maybe because I had grown used to it, maybe because my friendship with Yeosang started on uncertainty, never allowing myself to grow close to him.”

Hongjoong hummed. “That’s fucked up,” he said. He moved his hand away from the stick to squeeze Wooyoung’s knee comfortingly. “You did attend therapy as well, for a while at least.”

“Yes. That definitely helped in dealing with it all.” He bit his lower lip, licking it afterwards. It was chapped, the cold aiding with his already dry and overly sensitive skin. “When I got Seonghwa hyung’s phone call, that was when I allowed myself for the first time to think over my relationship with Yeosang… What it actually meant to me.”

Hongjoong glanced at him. Their neighborhood grew into view around them, the building in which they had their flat raised in the distance. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re very dear to Yeosang.”

Wooyoung hummed. “Maybe.”

The 26th of November approached quickly, quicker than Yeosang would’ve preferred and yet not quick enough.

He yearned to see Wooyoung again. 

They had spent the days texting one another and on one occasion Yeosang had visited Wooyoung and Mingi at their university. But the prospect of Wooyoung’s birthday felt different, especially as it seemed that Wooyoung had planned to spend it _ only _ with Yeosang.

It felt a lot like a date. They were going to watch a movie and grab dinner afterwards. 

Yeosang looked at himself in the mirror him and Jongho had gotten for their room from Ikea some time ago. It was body length and currently Yeosang was looking at his ripped black jeans, the plaid shirt he wore to it, snuck into the waist. His winter coat was laid out on his bed together with his blue beanie. 

“Someone’s looking dashing!” Yunho commented. He was leaning against the door frame and peering at Yeosang with a teasing yet soft smile. “Are you excited?” he asked and stepped inside the room to stand behind Yeosang.

“Yes, a bit nervous,” he admitted.

“It’s going to be fine,” Yunho promised him. “I could see that Wooyoung genuinely likes you.”

Yeosang smiled, looking down. He could feel his cheeks grow warm, but when he looked at himself in the mirror there was no color in them. But step by step these things were returning, he could see it in the healthy color Yunho’s face was gaining, even as he wore no makeup.

Yeosang himself had applied the tan foundation and the contact lenses, he still struggled walking around without these cover-ups. The several times San had come to their house, bare faced and so full of healthy pride towards his person, had inspired Yeosang. He had started walking around bare faced inside the house, getting more comfortable with the idea. Yunho and Jongho joining him in the self love activity. Mingi was the only one that still struggled with it.

“Ready?” Yunho asked him. Yeosang nodded. “All right, I’ll drive you then,” Yunho told him. “Seonghwa hyung says, now that I have my license I should drive as much as possible to get familiar with the car and traffic.”

“Oh boy,” Yeosang muttered, grinning when Yunho scoffed, offended. “I’ll have to believe San, then, that you’re a good driver.”

“I am!” Yunho insisted. “Did you grab the present?”

“Oh, shoot!” Yeosang moved to the box he had hidden underneath his bed, retrieving it. Due to his nerves he had completely forgotten about it. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“No problem,” Yunho said with a laugh.

They left the house, bidding Jongho and Mingi goodbye, who were in the living room playing an intense game of Mario Kart. Even in the parking lot, Mingi’s protesting yells were heard. They entered Seonghwa’s car and drove off.

About twenty minutes later Yeosang and Wooyoung stood in the cold November air in front of the cinema, Yunho had left, but not before wishing Wooyoung a happy birthday and quietly teasing Yeosang about the date-not-date.

“Shall we go inside?” Wooyoung asked.

“Ah, wait,” Yeosang said, pulling out the small box from his winter coat. It was wrapped in dark blue paper with a yellow bow. “I got you a little something.”

Wooyoung hesitated before taking it. “Oh,” he muttered out shyly. “You didn’t have to.”

“But I wanted to,” Yeosang told him, feeling his whole being grow hot and cold in embarrassment. “It’s nothing big,” he assured his friend.

Yeosang watched Wooyoung rip the paper off of the present with trembling hands. Inside was a black box, when Wooyoung opened it it revealed a simple leather bracelet with two silver moons dingling from it. There were letters ingrained in them.

“Oh?” He cocked his head curiously, taking out the bracelet.

“It’s a, uhm, friendship bracelet,” he explained, pushing up the sleeve of his coat, revealing the same bracelet around his wrist. “It matches with mine. The moons bear our initials.”

Wooyoung smiled beautifully, his cheeks flushing. “That’s cute. Thank you, Yeosang.” He put on the bracelet and then hugged him briefly.

Yeosang felt overwhelmed all of a sudden, exhaling nervously. “It’s okay if you don’t like it, I can—”

Wooyoung shook his head vehemently. “No, no, I like it. Love it. I really mean it.”

“Okay.” Yeosang nodded his head and smiled shyly. “I’m glad.”

“Why the moons, though?” Wooyoung asked him.

“Well, they were the coolest design they had,” he admitted with a breathy and embarrassed laugh.

Wooyoung grinned. “I see. Well I like it.”

“I’m glad.”

With that they left to enter the cinema.

After the movie and dinner, they returned to the PDS sufferers house riding the tram. They talked about the movie’s plot, comfortable and with their bellies filled. Yeosang had invited Wooyoung over to chill a bit at the house, hang out with the other occupants if they were around—which Yeosang knew they were. Jongho didn’t have many friends and Mingi liked to stay at home being the youngest’s company.

When the exited the tram, they walked for about ten minutes before a heavy downpour befell them. They stopped in their tracks, looking up surprised. 

Wooyoung giggled then exalariated. The afternoon had been magical and he did not care for some rain, even if maybe it could mean for him to catch a cold.

“Come on!” he said, grabbing Yeosang’s wrist to pull him down the road towards the house.

Yeosang followed him, their footsteps bouncing off the buildings around them. Everything was muffled due to the downpour, but Yeosang still could hear the steady heartbeat in his chest. As if he was alive, and for a moment he let himself forget his Partially Dead status.

He laughed along with Wooyoung, his cheeks almost hurting. God, he was so enamoured.

“Race you?” Yeosang pulled himself free from Wooyoung and dashed down the street, hearing Wooyoung’s protests behind him.

He turned around the moment he reached the driveway of his house, laughing when he saw Wooyoung’s drenched figure chasing him, a playfully pissed off look on his face.

“That wasn’t fair,” Wooyoung complained, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

“You’re just a bad loser,” Yeosang told him, grinning.

Wooyoung rolled his eyes and began walking towards the house, its lights were on which meant that someone was home. He pointedly ignored all of Yeosang’s teasing, dramatically pushing open the door of the house, as if he lived there. It made Yeosang smile.

Once they were inside, taking off their shoes, with light bathing the entrance hall, they slowly came down from their giddiness, and when Wooyoung looked at Yeosang, he had a peculiar look on his face. A bit stunned and nervous.

Wooyoung’s eyes were traveling all over his face. “Um, Yeosang,” he started hesitantly, “I, er—Your makeup is…” he trailed off, gesturing wildly.

Yeosang could feel his heart drop, staying unnervingly still. He felt as if he was dying all over again. How could he have forgotten? He was dead. He _ looked _ dead. Wooyoung probably felt uncomfortable looking at his bare face, seeing the ashy gray skin and the little scars here and there. He swallowed, balling his hands into fists.

“Right.” He pulled at his sleeve, awkwardly and ashamedly edging away from Wooyoung. “I-I’ll be right back,” he stuttered out and fled up the stairs.

He nearly tripped over the last few, but caught himself in time. He heard Mingi and Jongho’s confused shouts from downstairs, and Wooyoung’s worried voice answering them.

He fled into the bathroom, nearly choking on his tears. He took out his contact lenses to cleanse them before he would put them back in.

Yeosang hoped he could reapply the makeup that had started to fade due to the heavy downpour. His hands were shaking as he pulled out his neceser bag from the cupboard underneath the sink, he ripped the zipper open and retrieved the foundation.

He heard someone’s footsteps approach and when he turned around he saw that it was Wooyoung.

“Yeosang,” he said carefully, his voice soft. His eyes were trained on Yeosang’s partially exposed face. 

He let out a self-deprecating, short laugh. “You probably think I’m hideous.”

Wooyoung shook his head, determined. “No, I don’t.”

“Are you sure?” Yeosang asked, incredulous.

“You always look beautiful to me,” Wooyoung promised him.

He inched closer to Yeosang, reaching out his hands to cradle his face delicately. He ran his thumbs over Yeosang’s cheeks softly, removing some of the makeup that was still there. He was staring at him with such intensity that Yeosang’s dead heart was more alive than ever, beating painfully fast in his chest. Wooyoung was searching his face intently.

“I could never look at you and _ not _ see you, Yeosang.”

The tension in the room rose and soon it became laden with unspoken words and their hearts’ matters. All that had built itself up over the years pouring out of Wooyoung’s fingertips on Yeosang’s cheeks.

“Can I kiss you?” Yeosang wondered quietly, courage suddenly growing in him.

Wooyoung nodded mutely, leaning forward. Their lips brushed against one another softly and still hesitantly, even if they were both there and on board, fear was ever present in their minds. It was maddening to Yeosang, the gentleness with which Wooyoung was kissing him. As if he could break or disappear any moment. He wanted more than that.

Yeosang pushed himself closer against Wooyoung, his hands coming up to hold Wooyoung’s waist tightly, and kissed him with more intent, throwing all precautions out of the window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to write a last chapter for this fic, but currently I literally cannot bring myself to get into this universe again, so for the time being I will leave the fic to finish here! If I end up writing the last chapter in the future, I will update it of course ^^ 
> 
> Everyone who read this, commented, left kudos... It means a lot to me. Thank you!!! I love you!!! 💛💛💛💛

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!!💛  
my twitter: [@hhhjoong](https://www.twitter.com/hhhjoong)


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